Ben there, recently

NEA Today, Feb 2001 by Jehlen, Alain

Young Kentucky teachers train their first-year colleagues.

The beginning of the first year of teaching is rough for almost everybody. But few new teachers have ever started out as roughly as Stephanie Urlage.

At the start of her teaching career, Urlage couldn't even stand up in front of her Richmond, Kentucky classroom. Urlage had been in a construction accident and couldn't walk. To get around White Hall Elementary, she had to use a wheelchair. She also had to miss a lot of her first school days, to see doctors about blood clots in her leg.

But things weren't totally bleak. The school's principal got a special chair to help Urlage maneuver between student desks, and the children vied for the honor of wheeling "Ms. Urlage" around.

"I had days when I thought I'd never dig myself out of my hole," recalls Urlage, the former president of the Kentucky Education Association Student Program. "But I had the greatest kids. They were part of my recovery."

It wasn't until March of her first year that Urlage realized that, despite her recovery, she could have failed to get her teaching certificate.

Under Kentucky law, a teacher's first year is an internship, and first-year teachers must meet a long list of requirements. Urlage was at risk for failing to teach a minimum number of days. She met the requirement, but she realized, then and there, just how easy it is for new teachers to lose track of all the rules.

Now in her third year, Urlage has joined forces with two other young teachers, Gigi Miller of Lexington and Gala Catron of Frankfort, to help today's first-year teachers avoid the same problems she faced.

Urlage and her colleagues have designed a three-hour Kentucky Education Association workshop that aims to help interns master the tricks of the trade that so many teacher education programs leave out.

The program's title: "So you want to be a teacher. Is that your final answer?" Almost all the trainers in the program are young, notes Urlage.

"They can say, `This is a headache I had. I don't want you to have it,'" she points out.

Last fall, more than 700 interns and their resource teachers took the training. The first hour covers both the detailed requirements of the internship regulations and the intricacies of special education law.

Trainers also offer neophytes an array of useful tips covering everything from grant writing to relating to parents at conferences.

For example, Urlage tells new teachers that at conferences, they should sit with the parents and not have a table in between. She suggests that they keep a box of tissues handy because at least one parent is likely to cry.

Urlage also likes to tell new teachers that "you must have a life outside of school or you'll go nuts."