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Patricia Hrusa Williams is a professor of early childhood education at the University of Maine at Farmington. This column reflects her views and expertise and does not speak on behalf of the university. She is a member of the Maine chapter of the national Scholar Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear in the BDN every other week.
Free curriculum downloads. Discounts on classroom materials and work clothes. Free coffee or lunch. Welcome to National Teacher Appreciation Week, celebrated May 7-10. Don’t get me wrong, our teachers deserve to be recognized, but what do they really want? Their salaries are low and the stresses that come with the work are high. Besides a pay increase, what they really need is support and mentoring.
The National Education Association reports the average yearly salary for new teachers in Maine is just over $41,000, 37th in the country. Efforts to raise starting salaries remain stalled in the Maine Legislature. If we can’t raise pay, what else can we do?
My research finds that 94 percent of new teachers want employers who provide an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect; this was rated higher than pay. More than 80 percent want employers who care about work-life balance, value their ideas, foster relationships between teachers and assist them in supporting children in the classroom. To retain this new generation of teachers, we should attend to these needs through strong new teacher mentoring programs.
Maine teachers are especially vulnerable in their first three years. The Maine Education Policy Research Institute has found almost 25 percent leave teaching. This begs the question: Does Maine have a crisis of recruiting teachers or retaining them?
Maine law requires school districts to provide mentoring to teachers with less than five years of experience. However, what’s the best way to help new teachers? As more experienced ones retire and leave the profession, we lose talent valuable to developing new teachers so they persist in the profession.
During this school year, I established a program at the University of Maine at Farmington called the New Teacher Academy. Using pandemic funds from the Maine Jobs and Recovery Program offered through the University of Maine System, a model of mentoring support was developed that shows great promise in retaining new teachers.
The academy serves school districts to help mentors, especially new ones, learn how to develop teachers in their first three years. Monthly enrichment sessions address topics like how to effectively mentor (and be mentored), relationship building, conducting supportive classroom observations, teaching practices, addressing challenging behavior, reflecting on teaching and balancing personal and professional needs. For some sessions, mentors and mentees meet together; for others, they meet separately to discuss their unique needs and challenges. A mentor coordinator also conducts site visits, meeting with mentor-mentee pairs across the school year.
The program is working with seven school districts and 130 new teachers and their mentors. While districts are required to provide mentoring support, the New Teacher Academy provides a framework for these efforts and adds to what districts can offer with their limited resources. The shortage of mentors is so dire that at least one district has hired retired teachers as coaches. With mentors and mentees spread across schools, grade-levels and their experience in Maine schools, the program provides them with the opportunity to develop strong and supportive relationships, learn about effective practices in schools across the state and create a web of support for both new teachers and new mentors.
I am grateful for the support provided by the Mills administration and the University of Maine System to get this program off the ground. However, we need to consider how to make these supports permanent. Solving the teacher shortage requires more than lowering standards and raising pay to get new teachers into schools. We need to retain new and experienced teachers to develop a strong, vibrant, stable teacher workforce. Free coffee and discounts are nice. However, providing continued and intentional support to teachers is probably the best gift we can give them.