State Grant to Launch Teacher Mentoring Program

Ventura County educators have been awarded a $200,000 grant to design and launch a statewide model to evaluate and mentor new teachers.

Calling the state grant a “real coup,” County Supt. of Schools Charles Weis said Friday that his office, in conjunction with Cal Lutheran University, will use the money over the next year and a half to develop the program.

“It’s just a great opportunity to have a statewide impact because peer review is a key issue,” Weis said.

The Beginning Teaching Support and Assessment Program has been in California schools for 10 years, but there was no accountability built into the program, said Carol A. Bartell, dean of the School of Education at Cal Lutheran.

Bartell and husband Ted Bartell, who is the director of research and evaluation in Weis’ office, will develop the state model for running and managing the mentor program.

“We’re developing the training materials,” she said. “We’re training the trainers.”

Carol Bartell is already familiar with the assessment effort. Before coming to Cal Lutheran, she managed it for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which runs the program with California Department of Education. Those two groups funded the grant.

When the opportunity came along to design the model, Bartell jumped at the chance.

“For me, it’s been a longtime labor of love watching the program develop and watching the teachers go through the program and blossom,” she said.

Through the program, new teachers are assigned a mentor. The new teacher is evaluated by the mentor and together they often decide on extra training programs that would be helpful.

It is an effort to support new teachers as they go through the tough times of their first few years, Bartell said.

While many districts have the program in place, it is expected to eventually be made available to all new teachers.

“Teachers are naturally nurturing, but they don’t often nurture each other,” she said. “This helps break down that isolation. This helps them to work as colleagues.”