“Between now and 2020, 1.5 million new teachers will be hired. In five years!”* Barb Sramek of Marshall shook her head at this statistic as she and other DCNTP board members began evaluating scholarship applications for the New Teacher Center Symposium on Induction at the DCNTP board meeting on December 9, 2014.
Enthusiasm for their task was especially high: all seven will be attending the symposium this year, and reading the applications was a reminder of their own commitment to helping new educators succeed. Sharing reflections at the beginning of the meeting on how any personal success in leading their districts towards high induction standards is tied to support from others only served to reinforce how much beginning teachers need support.
With the two scholarship winners (George Mavroulis of Middleton-Cross Plains and Shawdi Nesbit of Sun Prairie), plus some additional Madison School District staff, more than a dozen DCNTP members will be at the symposium this year. Those who’ve gone in the past say it’s well worth the investment, with individual districts and the DCNTP benefitting from emerging leadership among symposium veterans.
Another unique NTC event that helps the DCNTP continually evolve to serve its members is the New Teacher Induction Network (NTIN). About two dozen induction programs across the country work with NTC, meeting twice per year and sharing ideas, identifying goals, and measuring progress.
Tom Howe of DCNTP, Aloy Pien of Sun Prairie, and Andrew Briddell of Monona Grove are the NTIN team. This year they picked one just one of the ten Induction Program Standards to focus on: Program Assessment, Evaluation, and Accountability. The goal they decided on, and how to implement, is described in this NTIN document.
You can see the full meeting agenda with notes here, including other supporting documents.
* The U.S. Department of Education estimates a universe of 3.7 million K-12 teachers in 2012.