Ways to Support New Teachers

After my first year of teaching, I was ready to quit. I literally went on several interviews for non-teaching jobs and actually accepted one initially before deciding to give teaching another year. And most of us have heard the ubiquitous statistics that roughly a third of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and almost half leave within five.

I'm now very happy and successful teaching. I'm sure my colleagues would agree that I'm an asset to the teaching profession. So what can schools do to make sure they don't scare good teachers away?

According to NEA's article "Why They Leave," the main reasons teachers leave are government mandates, lack of support from parents and administrators, lack of respect for their profession from the community, and lack of influence in decisions that affect education.

In addition, funding is always a problem. Many teachers don't have the resources at their schools to do their jobs properly. At a recent staff meeting, we watched a video about the perfectionism that Apple encourages in their employees, but teachers often have to go for "good enough" due to lack of resources, support, and time. It's frustrating to always be scrambling to keep up and juggling multiple responsibilities and never really perfecting anything.

But some things can be done locally. So if schools can make it work, following is my list of suggestions to help schools retain good teachers. Obviously, these would be great for all teachers, but when resources are short, we can at least make them a priority for new teachers.

1. Smaller Classes: New teachers should have reasonable class sizes, even if it means distributing a few extra students to veteran teachers. Veteran teachers should not get the best classes, best resources, and top priority just because they have seniority. They should unselfishly support the newbies.
2. Fewer Preps: In secondary schools, new teachers should only be teaching one or two different classes if at all possible, so they can work to perfect some things that first year.
3. Useful Duties: Why have new teachers spend an entire period supervising lunch? If the school can make it work, allow new teachers to observe other teachers and read and reflect on professional texts as their duty.
4. Safe Environment: Create an environment in which new teachers feel safe asking for advice. Everyone knows you won't be really good at teaching your first year, so let new teachers know they don't have to feel like a failure if they aren't perfect. Encourage them to reflect, evaluate themselves, and ask for help.
5. More Accountability: If there is adequate support in the first four areas on this list, then hold those new teachers accountable. Pop in for unscheduled, informal observations and give constructive feedback. Give them deadlines for when they should have those essays graded and returned. And if they have to turn in any lesson plans, reflections, curriculum maps, etc., have someone actually review them and give feedback.