To be successful in a teaching career will take a lot of hard work and dedication. But above all, it will take an efficient design of support for teachers to make right actions and provide quality learning to the students. Thus, supporting novice teachers is necessary for them to remain in the profession as well as to enhance their teaching skills. Through consistent support, new teachers are likely to improve. We know exponential growth happens when teachers have mentors, they can remain in one grade for various years, and when they are collaborating with others.When I was a teacher in the classroom, I had two mentors, one that was student focused and one that was an advocate for student passion.  Ms. Miko a minority teacher like me and was so brutally honest, I valued this mentor-ship but sometimes her evidence would hurt my feelings.  I remember one time, I went to the teacher store and vividly decorated a bulletin-board with my purchase, ran to her classroom to show her and she said, “Nice but how is this related to your theme, and what standard does this address?”  Ms. Miko would always push me to think about why, purpose, standards, assessments and culture.  I needed Ms. Miko and I was glad that my principal at the time connected me with two mentors.  On the other hand, there was Ms. Valdez, who was so inspiration and loved everyone.  She considered every moment, an experience.  After finding a half-dead baby bird on campus, her and the students found a way to nurse it back to life.  Now, that wasn’t my style, but she would inspire me to teach to the skill and not the entire curriculum.  Her feedback gave me the freedom to insert readings into the text, extend a unit, and bring in outside visitors so students would understand how our themes are connected to life.  I never wanted to leave Noble Elementary School, because we were a family.  I stayed there for five years, but I know teachers that are still there.Below are the various types of support are proven to both make newcomers remain in the profession and effectively teach in education today. These include:

• Personal and Emotional Support- Beginning teachers can experience emotional challenges. Experienced colleagues can serve as a support system and provide advice to reduce the different forms of stress.

• Problem-Focused Support- Seasoned teachers can guide the newcomers regarding planning and accomplishing teaching tasks effectively.

• Low-Intensity Support- This strategy is where beginners will be provided with formal orientation and protecting the beginners from the extracurricular responsibilities. Also, the involvement of the veteran teachers is involved.

• High-Intensity Support- This support involves the measure of teaching performance of the beginners, including the complexity of the academic assignment, long-term planning of instruction and curriculum, student engagement percentage, instructional material used and the ability to reflect on the teaching practices.

According to Paul Hays, here are some other tips to retain teachers that work as well!

1. Recognition- This might seem like an obvious action to suggest but a lot of teachers move on to different roles and schools because they feel they’re being overlooked and undervalued in their current capacity.

2. Rewards- A traditional way to ensuring your staff want to stay in your school is to reward them for their hard work and dedication. This doesn’t necessarily have to start in and end with giving your teachers a boost in pay either, as 10% fewer education professionals would actually move roles for a higher salary than the national average (66%).

3. Career Investment- Another common incidence where teachers start looking to move onto a new school setting or role, is when they feel they’re not achieving their full potential and want the opportunity to progress quicker - in fact two-fifths would turn down a job that offered no training or development.

4. Support- You can’t expect your staff to remain motivated to stay and give their role 100% if you don’t support them in their position.

5. Community Culture- Finally, one of the best ways to keep teachers is to make sure they feel part of the collective community and culture at a school. This might be achieved through peer mentoring and curricular clubs.

Citation:

Stansbury, K., Zimmerman. J., Lifelines to the Classroom: Designing Support for Beginning Teachers

Mathur, Sarrup.  Impact of a Teacher Mentorship Program on Mentors’ and Mentees’ Perceptions of Classroom Practices and the Mentoring Experience

Feiman-Nemser, Sharon. What New Teachers Need to LearnHays, Paul. Five ways to retain top teaching Talent