News: Quality in the Classroom
Getting Through the Rough Patches

A Virginia mentor program pairs new teachers with NEA-Retired members, while a broad partnership pays the bills.

As a first-year teacher, Amy Link admits she was anxious and a little uncertain when she first stepped into her third grade classroom at Langley Elementary School in Hampton, Virginia. But Link didn't have to face her class alone, thanks to a mentor program that pairs new teachers with retired classroom veterans from the Hampton area.

"My mentor was really great, the kids didn't even notice her in the room, and, if anything, there was somebody there to support me," says Link.

Bettyrene Pope, a retired elementary school teacher and Link's mentor, says Link blossomed in the program.

"There was a big change," Pope says. "She developed more confidence. She knew from the start what she wanted to do, but she needed to figure out how to get from point A to point B. I helped her through the rough patches."

This school-centered mentoring program draws on the knowledge of experienced and retired teachers in an effort to increase the retention rate of beginning teachers.

The program's 20 mentors guide and advise about 60 new teachers, notes Su Lively, president of the Hampton Education Association and one of the program's co-founders. Mentors, she stresses, do not evaluate performance or take over the new teachers' classrooms.

"The new teachers like having someone they can discuss problems with, without any fear of an evaluation," Lively says. "When the mentor comes into the classroom, there's no tenseness like when an administrator comes in. They can draw on the mentor for help."

Most importantly, the mentors help their mentees overcome frustrations, and they encourage them to continue in the profession, Kellum adds.

Making this program work has taken the support of the Hampton local Association, the Virginia Education Association, VEA-Retired, and NEA-Retired. The school district and local universities have joined the collaboration as well.

As the program coordinator, Lively spends half her day teaching kindergarten at Machen Elementary School and the other half administering the program. Lively coordinates and trains the mentors, provides after-school workshops for the new teachers, and presents training sessions for education students at the two partner universities.

The program also provides release time so new teachers can observe experienced teachers from other schools. Meanwhile, Kellum helps promote the program and presents at the workshops.

The mentor program, which started in September, evolved from two projects Lively and Kellum had pursued individually.

Early last year, Lively initiated a partnership with Christopher Newport University to provide classroom management training to preservice and new teachers. She received a $5,000 NEA Urban Initiative Grant for her program.

At the same time, Kellum was working with Old Dominion University and developing a program to use retired teachers as mentors for new teachers. Kellum received an $8,000 NEA-Retired grant for her program.

The two women, and their partner universities, joined forces and applied last March for an NEA Teacher Recruitment & Retention Grant from the NEA Teacher Quality Department. The project received $10,000 for planning and an additional $34,000 a year for the two-year project.

With additional matching contributions from the school system and VEA, and in-kind contributions from the two universities, the program ended up with a $110,000 yearly budget, Lively says.

The budget covers the mentor training and professional development workshops, provides substitutes for new teachers who observe at other schools, and includes a small stipend for the mentors.

Kellum, who also serves on the Hampton City School Board, says the program is a worthwhile investment.

"The bottom line is that this is a money issue as well as a teaching issue," she says. "Every time you have to train a new person who comes on board, it's an expense. If we can retain new teachers and keep these people in place we'll get significant savings."

--Kristen Loschert and John O'Neil

For more on NEA Teacher Recruitment & Retention Grants, call 202/822-7350. For info on NEA-Retired Grants, go to www.nea.org/retired/grants.htm. And for more on NEA Urban Grants, go to www.nea.org/grants/urban.

Your Dues Did It
Need Mentor Program Tips?

The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE) has produced a symposium paper, Creating a Teacher Mentoring Program, that addresses many of the issues and questions that NEA local affiliates, school districts, and universities should consider when developing new or improving existing mentor programs. To read this paper, go to www.nea.org/achievement/teacher/details/03.html. For NFIE grant and program information, go to www.nfie.org/grants.htm.

Kudos To...

. . . the California Teachers Association, which in early spring kicked off a statewide advertising campaign to support CTA-sponsored legislation to give teachers the right to negotiate professional issues affecting their classrooms.

Assembly Bill 2160 would expand the California Education Employment Relations Act, which now confines the scope of bargaining to wages, hours, and working conditions.

This legislation would allow teachers to negotiate decision-making procedures around educational quality--such as developing and implementing programs to enhance student academic performance, developing educational objectives and course content, selecting textbooks and instructional materials, developing additional teacher training, and selecting evaluators and intervention teams for underperforming schools.

. . . the Utah Education Association, for waging a public awareness campaign to successfully defeat legislation that would have given parents up to a $2,116 tax credit for private school tuition. UEA credits its public awareness

. . . Oklahoma Education Association members, who recently packed 23 meeting halls across the state to educate lawmakers and the general public about the health care crisis they now face. Meeting participants learned that education employees receive just $69 monthly toward individual health insurance premiums, leaving most to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to cover the balance.

Organizing this effort was the Oklahoma Education Coalition, which is lobbying hard for passage of House Bill 1968. That bill would fund the individual health insurance premiums for all active education employees, at an estimated cost of $114 million.

. . . members of the Associated Faculties of the University of Maine/Maine Education Association for ratifying a 2001-02 contract that provides a 3.5 percent salary increase and implements recommendations made by the University-AFUM Gender Equity Study. As a result of the study, more than 200 female faculty members will receive base salary adjustments totaling more than $400,000.

. . . the Education Support Employees Association in Clark County, Nevada, for filing a mass grievance--and a complaint with the state Employee-Management Relations Board--after the school district began deducting $2.30 per paycheck for long-term disability insurance.

The parties have resolved the dispute by agreeing to change the provider of the long-term disability insurance, keep the benefit levels unchanged, end the paycheck deduction, and reimburse each employee for the total amount deducted since October.