The Sunnyvale Sun

Cover Story

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

New Cherry Chase teacher Jamie Katsuyama comes from a long line of teachers, including her mother, sister and uncle.

School Daze

Each brand new teacher now gets a mentor as school gets under way

By ERIN HUSSEY

The 29 beginning teachers in the Sunnyvale School District know all about stress.

"Teaching is like trading stocks and bonds because every day is stressful," reads one of the responses taped below the sign "Teaching is like ____ because ____."

"I made it through my first year just because I had a great mentor," said Christina Ballantyne, now a beginning teacher support and assessment mentor.

"As a new teacher you feel like you walk in with a sign stamped on your forehead saying 'I'm new,' and on top of all the excitement of a first job comes the stress of working with 20 to 35 small ones that all have their own opinion and are looking to you for leadership."

The support program was created in 1988 to help relieve some of these first-year teaching stresses and provide a more welcoming and supportive environment for beginning teachers.

"I definitely have some nerves about the first day," said first-year teacher Jamie Katsuyama.

Katsuyama, who comes from a family of teachers, will begin her career at Cherry Chase Elementary as a first-grade teacher. In addition to her family's expertise, she is grateful for the BTSA program.

"The BTSA orientation really showed me how much support and guidance we will be receiving this year," she said. "My university professors always said that our first year would definitely be the toughest. Having a mentor who has gone through some of the issues that we may need guidance with is extremely comforting."

BTSA's main goal is to provide an effective transition into the teaching career for first- and second-year teachers through individualized support and assessment and additional training sessions. All new teachers will have their own mentor who they can turn to and talk about teaching techniques, report cards, parents, students, principals and anything else they might have concerns about. Most importantly, everything will remain confidential and will not affect their job.

"We are there to support them," mentor Ginger Harris said.

"We are not there to evaluate them. Our role is to foster them as they move forward."

Harris, who is in her sixth year as a mentor, has witnessed multiple success stories.

"In the beginning, all teachers are enthusiastic," she said.

"I've had teachers who really struggled after the first weeks and questioned, 'Should I be doing this?' But at the end of their first year, they come back and say, 'You know, I feel really good, and I love what I do.'"

Not only are teachers enjoying teaching, they also progress faster.

"What I have found to this day," Harris said, "is that many of the teachers are doing things in the first year that most wouldn't be doing until their third or fourth."

Another program goal is to help retain beginning teachers.

"There are statistics that show a lot of teachers leave the profession within the first five years because of time and salaries," Ballantyne said.

"In California, where the cost of living is so high, it's really important we keep the good teachers. In Sunnyvale we have been able to keep a lot of our new teachers because of the BTSA program, and I think that's just wonderful."

Unlike other districts, Sunnyvale also has the benefit of having a full release for teachers who are BTSA mentors.Instead of adding the mentor tasks to their teaching responsibilities, teachers in Sunnyvale are allowed to take a sabbatical from the classroom so they can concentrate their energy on being a full-time mentor.

"We don't have to do this in addition to regular teaching," Ballantyne said. "We are able to focus all our time and attention on our new teachers."

In addition to one-on-one tutoring, role-playing and assisting with lesson plans, mentors will pay for a half-day field trip for beginning teachers to observe and meet other teachers from different schools in their grade level.

"When I first started teaching, it was 'Here's your room, here's your keys, go do it,' " Harris said.

"Years later I still often wonder how it might have been better if I had the support these kids have today."

More on the program

The California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) Induction program is a state-funded program, co-sponsored by the California Department of Education (CDE) and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC). BTSA provides formative assessment, individualized support and advanced content for newly credentialed, beginning teachers, and is a requirement for a California Professional (Clear) Teaching Credential.

The main purposes and objectives of the BTSA Induction program include:

* Providing an effective transition into the teaching career

* Improving the educational performance of students through training, information and assistance for teachers

* Enabling beginning teachers to be effective in teaching students who are culturally, linguistically and academically diverse

* Ensuring the professional success and retention of new teachers

* Ensuring that a support provider provides intense individualized assistance to each beginning teacher

* Ensuring that an individual induction plan is in place for each beginning teacher and is based on an ongoing assessment of the development of the beginning teacher

* Ensuring continuous program improvement through ongoing research, development and evaluation.

In conjunction with the BTSA program, the Sunnyvale Elementary School District also uses the Santa Cruz/Silicon Valley New Teacher Project to help train and develop beginning teachers. The mission of the SC/SVNTP is to improve classroom practice and develop reflective teachers who are responsive to the diverse cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds of all students. Its main goals include:

* Developing teacher capacity as defined in the California Standards for the Teaching Profession and BTSA Induction Program Standards

* Directing support toward improving student achievement

* Using formative assessment practices to guide support and teacher professional development

* Documenting professional growth over time

* Modeling and encouraging ongoing self-assessment and reflection

* Fostering collaboration and leadership among teachers

* Providing advisement and support related to induction and credentialing requirements.

For more information on BTSA, visit www.btsa.ca.gov.