Pilot program boosting teachers aid

The first year in the classroom is notoriously tough, but DPS is testing out a new approach

A teacher’s first year in the classroom is often a sink-or-swim experience.

That was true for Kyle Jordan. A history major in college, Jordan underwent six weeks of training through an alternative teacher licensure program in Texas before being handed the keys to his own classroom at an alternative high school in Houston.

Being in his early 20s made it easy for him to form strong bonds with his teenage students, but he struggled with lesson planning. He was instructed in how to break up fights but not how to get his students to refocus after the skirmish was over.

The help and mentoring he’d been promised when he was hired never materialized, he said.

“The other teachers had a running bet: ‘What month is he going to bail?’” Jordan said.

He made it to the end of the year. But he realized that to stay in teaching, he needed more support. This fall, after moving to Colorado and completing a master’s degree in education, he’ll be one of six new “associate teachers” in Denver Public Schools who will teach part-time in a highpoverty school and spend the rest of their time planning, observing, and learning.

The small pilot is part of a new district strategy to better prepare new teachers to work in Denver’s many high-poverty schools, which tend to hire more novices. The students in those schools are more likely to be behind academically and in need of top-notch teachers.

Nationally, one in 10 new teachers quits after their first year, according to research by the U.S. Department of Education. Districts across the country are trying different ways to stem the tide. Denver officials hope that investing in novice teachers will allow the teachers to hone their craft faster and to stay at highneeds schools for longer.

“We know how challenging that first year can be for a new teacher, even when they’ve had high-quality training,” said Laney Shaler, the district’s director of new teacher pathways and development. “We want to extend that de- velopmental runway.”

The teachers aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit. Some research shows high teacher turnover is detrimental to student learning, especially in high-poverty schools. For districts, it can be time-consuming and costly to hire more and more teachers each year.

Shaler said the district’s longterm vision is that all novice teachers hired to work in Denver Public Schools will first spend time training in one of its highpoverty schools as an associate teacher, a teacher resident, a student teacher, or in some other role. The difference between an associate teacher and a teacher resident or student teacher is that associate teachers are already licensed and able to teach on their own, or they’re part of a program like Teach for America, which has participants teach full-time while earning their certification.

The district has designated seven high-poverty schools as “teaching academies” that will specialize in serving as training grounds for new teachers the way teaching hospitals do for new doctors.

That’s different than the way it works now, which is that various universities and teacher preparation programs have informal partnerships with individual schools to train aspiring teachers.

Three of the teaching academies — North High School, McAuliffe Manual Middle School, and Goldrick Elementary School — will have associate teachers this fall. They will be paid slightly less than regular first-year teachers: $38,000 as opposed to $41,689. The cost will be split between the schools and the district. In all, the district will spend $325,000 in 2018-19 to get the teaching academies up and running, with $150,000 going to associate teacher salaries.

Emily McNeil will be an associate math teacher at North. She’s already familiar with the school, having done her residency there while earning her teaching license. As an associate teacher, she’ll be teaching on her own for the first time, but for three periods a day rather than five. She and the other associate teachers will spend the rest of their time planning, observing other teachers, attending training sessions, and getting advice and feedback from mentors.

McNeil hopes the role will allow her to ease into a profession she knows can be tough.

“Teaching is such an art,” she said. “It’s not something you can learn overnight.”

North Principal Scott Wolf sees the associate teacher role as one more way to authentically prepare new teachers to work at a school where 76 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty, and 87 percent are students of color.

If a teacher trains at a predominantly white or wealthy school, “they are not going to be able to come into North and be successful right away,” he said. It takes a different mentality, and a willingness to build relationships with students, to teach in a high-poverty school, Wolf said.

“We need teachers who want to do the work not just as job but as a vocation,” he said.

Jordan, the teacher from Texas, will be an associate geography teacher there this fall. He’s hopeful that after such an unsupportive experience his first time in the classroom, this new role will make his second go-round more manageable and successful.

“It’s less, ‘Oh there’s a new teacher. Let’s see if they’ll make it to the end of the year,’” he said. “It’s more, ‘You’re part of this. We’re going to help you. Your success is our success.’”

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit news organization covering education issues. For more, visit chalkbeat.org/co.