Sun Prairie, Baraboo Mentoring Programs Help New Teachers Succeed

By Terry Lawler
Contributing writer

The concept of a mentor and a student is an ancient one, going back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle. Master and apprentice, teacher and disciple, the relationship between these two entities lies at the core of the education process.

Unfortunately, the benefits of this relationship have been, until recently, unavailable to most of Wisconsin’s new teachers.

PI 34 attempts to remedy this situation by establishing rules to support “initial educators” with ongoing induction and orientation, trained mentors and staff development. Half of all teachers leave the profession in their first five to seven years, in no small measure due to the lack of a meaningful support structure.

While it is left to individual districts to design their mentoring programs, several districts in the state have made a significant commitment in time, personnel and money to develop mentoring programs that not only support new teachers but help ensure that they remain in the profession. Two such districts are Sun Prairie and Baraboo.

Both of these districts have placed trusted, experienced classroom teachers into full-time mentoring positions. In addition, they allow their initial instructors to observe, consult, and conference often, both during the regular school day and outside of it.

While the goal for both these districts is essentially the same – to hire and retain the best and brightest new teachers and provide them with the support they need to realize their full potential – the journey each district is taking reflects that district’s uniqueness and creativity.

Sun Prairie: The power of reflection

Sun Prairie’s mentoring team includes (left to right) Nancy Nikolay, Aloy Pien, Karyn Stocks Glover, Carol Dawes, and Tim Keal.

Tim Keal and Karyn Stocks Glover are in their second year as full-time mentors. “We have the opportunity to reflect on our own teaching practice and talk about what good instruction looks like in the classroom,” said Keal, a high school social studies teacher. “We are building a professional learning community by talking about best practices in education.”

Stocks Glover, a high school English teacher, tallies the opportunities for discussion in the program.

“Besides formal observations, the mentors have weekly one-on-one meetings with their initial educators. There are also regular opportunities for the initial educators to meet with each other for professional development and collaboration.”

Even though this is only the second year of the program, Stocks Glover has seen new teachers make impressive progress.

“Now I’m in my second year with the same group of teachers that I started with last year, so that group in particular has seen significant growth and success in terms of their ability to shift their focus from that ‘survival place’ of just showing up every day and trying to deliver a lesson, to really being reflective and thoughtful about what they’re teaching, how they’re teaching, and why they’re teaching. They think about teaching in a more sophisticated way than second-year teachers normally do. I work with second-year teachers who look like they’ve been in the classroom six or seven years, but I have to remind myself that they are second-year teachers and still need support.

The time to reflect benefits not only the district’s new teachers, but their mentors as well, said Carol Dawes, an elementary teacher of 33 years.

“We meet every week, and it is the most vital, rejuvenating professional development that I have had in 30-some years of teaching. We get together from 8 to 12 on Fridays. We do collective problem-solving, celebrate our successes, and assign ourselves professional reading in both curricular areas and the idea of mentoring and the role of mentoring.”

Initial educators keep collaborative logs. “We start our conferences with the question, ‘What’s working?’ ” Dawes said.

Aloy Pien, the fourth of Sun Prairie’s full-time mentors, said she keeps trying to get new teachers to an “Aha!” moment.

“An example is the teacher who discovered that the grading program, Webgrader, was more than just a tool to record progress. It could be utilized to plan future lessons.

“We also give new teachers a great deal of emotional support,” said Stocks Glover. “To suggest that all those emotions don’t exist because of a mentor program would be false; they do struggle. They have their good days and their bad days, but in us they have completely confidential guides and collaborators.”

All of the mentoring staff are adamant that confidentiality is the cornerstone of the mentoring process.

“We do not discuss our initial instructors with administrators, other teachers or union leaders,” Dawes said. “We are not there to judge the teacher; we are there to help find solutions.”

Nancy Nikolay, the district’s staff development coordinator, also oversees the mentoring program. Since Sun Prairie’s mentors can hold those positions for only three years before returning to the classroom, Nikolay has the task of finding new mentors from the teacher ranks.

“We do have several applicants, but getting ready to mentor is a rigorous process. We’re looking for people who are not only strong instructional leaders, but who have good mentoring skills as well. Some applicants decide that it’s more work than they bargained for. It’s grueling work trying to move people’s practices forward, but the work can be very rewarding.”

For the mentoring team, the rewards have outweighed the struggles.

“This is by far the most professionally progressive work I’ve ever done. When I get back to the classroom, I will be a better teacher,” said Stocks Glover.

Pien agreed. “It will be an incredibly different experience for me to return to the classroom, particularly after working with this team. I see things from a different vantage. They’re so talented and smart and I’m learning so much from this team. I’m not the same person. It’s been life-changing.”

Baraboo: The strength of networking

New Baraboo teachers (left to right) Laura Perren, Elizabeth Heiser and Kathy Andreasen receive support from mentors Teresa Lien and Susan Gissal, and program director Crystal Ritzenthaler.

Crystal Ritzenthaler, the curriculum director for Baraboo’s schools and the person in charge of the mentoring process, remembered, “We had an informal mentoring program in the district before the 2005-06 school year. When the opportunity arrived to improve the program, we were not interested in meeting the minimum requirements of PI 34. We wanted to build an infrastructure that would sustain instruction for years to come. We did a lot of investigation both in the state and out because we wanted a research-based program for instructors and mentors.”

The result is a mentoring program that utilizes one full-time instruction facilitator, Teresa Lien, who works hand-in-hand with building mentors and initial educators in the district.

“I’m in classrooms five to seven periods a day. I make sure I have a formal meeting with each initial instructor once a week,” she said.

Lien also oversees the relationship between new teachers and their building mentors. She demonstrates lessons in the new teachers’ classrooms which offers the new teachers an opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t.

“So many new teachers are afraid to fail, but I tell them ‘You don’t know what you don’t know.’ Failure happens, and learning from it is important.”

Ritzenthaler said Lien “is not an administrator or an evaluator.”

“I am never put in that position in this district nor are the building mentors,” Lien added. “The new teachers perceive that very quickly and realize that we are truly their advocates.”

That advocacy is crucial to a new teacher’s success, said second-year teacher Elizabeth Heiser.

“The most incredible thing about this district is the opportunity to build relationships,” Heiser said. “Having a mentor you can go to at any time is huge, not just for instruction. Mentors help you to understand district policies and many things that they don’t teach you in college.”

Laura Perren, also in her second year, said, “You learn that teaching is so much more than just curriculum. Now you must make sure that your students are fed, clothed, and cared for. You have to ask who brought a snack, or who’s going home by bus or car. It’s overwhelming.”

Susan Gissal, a 5th-grade teacher with 15 years of experience, was Perren’s first-year building mentor.

“For me,” Perren said, “working with Susan was a security issue. The summer before I started, Susan was there for me all the time. She gave me everything I needed.”

Gissal believes that she has gotten much in return. “I was given release time to observe Laura for one full day. I found myself learning all kinds of new things that the colleges are teaching now.

“The district provides information for the new teachers in advance of when it is needed,” Gissal said. “They learn about things like conferencing with parents, something I wish I had been taught when I started.”

Initial educators with fewer than three years of teaching experience receive two years of mentoring and they may opt for a third. Teachers who come to the district with more than three years’ experience are mentored for one year.

Kathy Andreasen, now in her sixth year of teaching, came to Baraboo after teaching in a district in the Milwaukee area. “In my previous district, I was taken to my classroom, told ‘Here,’ and left alone. I had no mentors except those people I sought out on my own. Here there are so many people you can go to without having the feeling of being a burden on people. Just little things – the report cards here are different from those in my old district. It doesn’t matter what the question is, there is always somebody who can help.”

Lien wants to expand the mentoring concept to include a “socialization” component. Heiser added, “There are things about the community we need to know: what are the town’s banking options; where is the public library; where do younger people hang out on the weekends?”

Lien said she is always expanding the network of resources available to her and the initial educators.

On August 8-9, Lien and Paul Gasser will conduct the first annual New Teacher Academy at the Park Plaza Hotel in Baraboo.

“We are seeking teachers with solid and practical advice to be presenters at the Academy,” Lien said. “The presentations should focus on the areas of classroom management or instruction.”

• • •

Baraboo and Sun Prairie have found mentoring processes that are reaping benefits for their new teachers, their mentors, their districts, and, of course, the children. Sun Prairie has taken its direction from the Wisconsin New Teacher Project, which utilizes the expertise of the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Baraboo chose to follow the model set forth by Dr. Robert Marzano.

Both districts know how critical it is to hire and retain highly qualified staff. The cost to a district when an instructor leaves after five years is $50,000, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s future.

“When you consider the financial and time commitments a district makes for its new teachers,” Ritzenthaler said, “it becomes critical to keep them both in the profession and in your district.”

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