Colleges Offering Help to New Teachers

With thousands of new and inexperienced teachers having been recruited to lead smaller elementary school classes this fall, local universities are scrambling to teach the new hires the basics of their profession.

Cal State Dominguez Hills last week enrolled 90 new teachers in an outreach training program, and it expects by February to be training as many as 400 from a dozen southern Los Angeles County school districts.

Cal State Northridge plans in January to begin offering night classes and teacher preparation workshops at some of the schools where new teachers are working, while delivering other courses by video or over the Internet. And other local universities are planning credential programs tailored to holders of emergency teaching permits.

The push to train the rookie teachers comes just in time, education experts say--some schools report that frustrated newcomers are quitting weeks into their inaugural school year.

If teachers with emergency credentials do not receive the support and training they need, the experts say, their students--and taxpayers--are unlikely to reap any benefits from state legislation creating smaller class sizes.

In a recent report, “A State of Emergency . . . in a State of Emergency Teachers,” the director of the California State University Institute for Education Reform, former state Sen. Gary K. Hart, warned: “As long as emergency teachers occupy California classrooms, the rhetoric of strengthening academic standards will remain hollow and hypocritical.”

In an effort to boost flagging academic performance in public schools, the Legislature in July allocated $771 million, or $650 per pupil, for elementary schools to limit classes in kindergarten through third grade to 20 pupils.

That meant far more classes--and an influx of emergency teachers, who are allowed to work without state credentials or without meeting other traditional requirements. That, in turn, put pressure on local universities to help the newcomers.

“The main thing is to get teachers trained,” said Gayle Heifetz of the Dominguez Hills program. “These people are in the trenches right now.”

Carolyn Ellner, dean of Northridge’s school of education, said that by taking its classes on the road the university will enable more of the newly hired teachers to earn state teaching credentials in 18 months instead of the three or more years it now typically takes.

The large number of new teachers hired, especially those in urban areas, has overwhelmed existing teacher credentialing programs at local universities. Los Angeles city schools, for example, have hired about 1,200 emergency teachers since July, officials said.

As a result, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s own credential program is full, as are the regular teacher training programs at Dominguez Hills and Northridge.

Northridge administrators have sent 1,000 questionnaires to new teachers in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County to help develop courses for them.

“We feel we can be much more user-friendly in designing new programs,” Ellner said.

In the Northridge program, the new teachers will take two classes: one on organizing classrooms, the other on teaching students who speak little English, said Arlinda Eaton, who runs the university’s elementary education program.

Enrollees will take courses on how to teach subjects such as reading while receiving tutoring, counseling and critiques of their in-class performance from both university and school district faculty members.

Under state law, emergency teachers must take at least six units in teacher preparation courses each year, or meet other requirements, to retain their permits. Those taking the minimum number of units sometimes spend years teaching without earning state credentials, officials said.

Students in the Dominguez Hills program will be able to earn a basic teaching credential in about 18 months, officials said.

As individual campuses try to accommodate the emergency teachers, the six Cal State campuses in the Los Angeles area are attempting to coordinate a program that would assign 6,000 teacher interns to local schools by 2000.

The Cal State system also is working with Los Angeles city schools to organize a joint internship program, said Cal State teacher education expert Bill Wilson.