New Teachers Learn Skills to Help Keep Them on Job : Project Matches Beginning and Veteran Educators to Handle Problems Such as Discipline in the Classroom

When problems of classroom organization and discipline threatened to overwhelm a beginning teacher at Dana Junior High School a quarter-century ago, he fortified himself with the famous line from comedian W.C. Fields: “Anyone who hates kids can’t be all bad.”

Today, some beginning teachers in San Diego can turn for help to a group of experienced colleagues, receive extra instructional guidance and obtain special funds, all under a pilot program completing its first year. The program is intended to keep beginning teachers, particularly those in urban schools with large multiethnic populations, from giving up in frustration at the many problems that no amount of student teaching or specialized lectures can fully prepare them for.

Laurie Willson, starting her first year at Zamorano Elementary School last fall, was able to ask Gail Kempton--a longtime veteran--for advice on setting up displays and enforcing discipline so that children get excited but organized about learning.

Someone Who Listened

“I could go to someone regularly who would listen when I felt like a basket case, (someone) who wasn’t evaluating me or treating me as one of a bunch of small problems, like an administrator might,” Willson said.

Willson was one of 24 teachers selected last fall under a new teacher retention effort of the San Diego Unified School District and the San Diego State University School of Education, which successfully competed for a $600,000 three-year grant from the California State University system.

It was modeled after smaller programs that San Diego State already has with the La Mesa-Spring Valley and Cajon Valley school districts without the inner-city emphasis.

National statistics show that between one-third and one-half of all new teachers quit the field within their first three years. Not only do education officials consider that a terrible waste of resources, but it poses practical problems in that the drop-out rate exacerbates a projected teacher shortage. State estimates show 95,000 new teachers will be needed in California by 1995.

“It was a godsend,” said Jan Perry, one of seven first-year teachers at Zamorano in the pilot program. Other participants came from Emerson, Bethune, Euclid, Valencia Park and Central, all elementary schools with large populations of minority pupils.

“Most teachers are (white), and we haven’t grown up with other races,” fourth-grade Zamorano teacher Jenny Phelan said. “We haven’t had a lot of exposure or experience to (multiethnic) settings.”

Each new teacher was paired with a “mentor” teacher, an experienced instructor already recognized by the school district for special skills and the ability to share them with other teachers.

Participants were able to call on their mentor teacher or those of others at any time, and also to sit in periodically on classes of mentor teachers to pick up ideas. Grant money paid for substitute teachers on those occasions.

The 24 new teachers also met as a group from time to time to discuss common problems and trade suggestions, learning that they are not alone in thinking that at times they were going crazy. San Diego State professors also held seminars to reinforce points that the teachers perhaps learned earlier during studies for a teaching credential but which now have more relevance as a result of classroom experiences.

Credits Toward Masters

The program gave the teachers six college credits toward a masters degree and provided them each with $500 toward buying extra classroom materials.

The group found all aspects of the pilot rewarding, “a real shot in the arm for us,” Phelan said.

“As a first-year teacher, you’d normally spend $300-$400 of your own money just setting up your class because no one can exist on what the district alone provides,” Perry said. “I bought counting blocks, alphabet letters for the wall, phonics books, and all sorts of puzzles and games.”

Elena Browne praised the mentor-teacher relationship. “They can see you in action as well (as you going to their class), and tell you what you are doing well and what is not so well,” Browne said.

said.

For example, discipline is considered more difficult in a multiethnic setting.

“At first, I’d wait and wait to try to get the class to be quiet and listen,” Phelan said. “My mentor gave me a great suggestion, to say that I will wait five seconds for quiet or else everyone would stay after school, which really means everyone must put their heads down on a desk.

“The idea worked like a charm.”

Added Willson, “A great thing about the mentor part is that you can take a suggestion and apply it the next day.

“When you’re student teaching (for eight weeks), it’s not your classroom to do things on your own.”

Phelan recalled how some classroom methodologies taught during her credential studies proved woefully inadequate for multicultural settings.

“In recreation theory, they’ll tell you to have students pick a partner and square dance,” she said. “But reality is one kid saying of another, ‘Ugh, he smells!’ or ‘She’s got dirty clothes!”’

She added, “You learn also not to always choose the best-performing kids for a task--it’s easy to always just pick the best.”

The teachers also learned how to handle their relationships with parents, especially since in urban areas parent interest in schools is not as pervasive as in suburbia.

“I learned to keep in mind that the parent is almost always trying to do the best he or she can, at the time,” Browne said. “No one intentionally is trying to harm (their child’s) education.”

Teacher Tricia Smith learned from a mentor teacher to send home positive notes to a parent from time to time about a child, letting the parent know that teacher contacts do not always involve negative concerns.

Phelan learned from mentor teachers and seminars to look for alternatives to parent support at times.

“Have the school librarian, even security, check a student’s homework, help out the child,” she said.

Perry said the program has taught the group how to “channel our energies into creativity, and to do so without burning out.”

“I wish this had been around when I started in Chicago, 49 children and me,” said Zamorano mentor teacher Gail Kempton. “I was very lonely.

“A lot of methods, such as putting 10 children in a reading group, streamlining paper work, checking to see if a child has learned a specific skill, all are great in theory but you don’t know if they’ll work for you until you get them into practice.”

Kempton said that while new teachers can always ask another teacher for advice, the program’s structure makes such links easier to establish.