Major Mentoring

NEA Today, Nov 2004

Sink or swim, that's the American way when it comes to learning to teach.

BUT VETERAN TEACHERS in Centerville, Ohio, wanted something better for their district's new recruits. So the Centerville Classroom Teachers Association (CCTA) joined forces with the school district to provide each rookie teacher with a mentor. And, so far, the program has succeeded. At a time when nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within their first five years, 96 percent of Centerville's first-year teachers return for a second year.

The program tries to pair together teachers who work in the same building and teach similar classes. The district also hires subs for eight days during the year so the mentor-mentee pairs can watch each other at work. Administrators cannot ask mentors how the new teachers are doing either. And new teachers appreciate that.

"They were kind of like a confidant, someone we could talk to and who we knew wouldn't get us in trouble," says Jessica Heronemus, a second-year middle school English teacher who completed the program last year.

Jessica Heronemus (above right) plans to use many of the teaching techniques she learned from her mentor, Beth Fischer (left).