Teacher Union Support

The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) play an important role in developing mentoring and induction programs. State and local affiliates of both organizations work with school districts to implement such programs. NEA-Alaska President Rich Kronberg states, "As we come to understand as a proven fact that quality teachers are the most significant variable in student success, supporting teacher professional development becomes more and more of a priority for the NEA and local affiliates. "This support is especially crucial in Alaska, where teacher salaries have steadily dropped, and there is a need not only to attract teachers to the state (70 percent of teachers come from out-of-state) but also to retain in-state teachers.

NEA-Alaska provides workshops and training to the local affiliates to develop their programs. Mark Jones, the UniServ director who provides much of the training, empowers the local organizations to take responsibility for program development and management. The Ketchikan Education Association, for example, has taken primary responsibility for building a very successful mentor program in that district. The Anchorage Education Association has developed a mentor program utilizing the expertise of retired teachers as mentors. Anchorage School District's Indian Education and special education programs also have their own teacher mentor programs.

Jones emphasizes strongly in his training that the mentor/teacher relationship be strictly confidential and that it not be tied to a teacher's evaluation. "The whole notion of having a good [mentor/beginning teacher] relationship is providing the opportunity to get all the issues out on the table." In fact, says Jones, there are statistics to show that the success rate of mentor relationships where communication was confidential is 30 percent greater than in relationships where information was open.

NEA-Alaska and the Anchorage Education Association have partnered with the University of Alaska and several school districts in a five-year federal grant that pairs a fifth-year student with a mentor for a full-year field experience, rather than a student teaching experience. This partnership, called the Alaska Partnership for Teacher Enhancement (APTE), is generating a cadre of well-trained and experienced mentors. APTE is defining and refining the skills, training, and program strategies that will be used in all mentor programs in the state. Jones, the NEA-Alaska representative and mentor trainer, has developed courses of study through APTE and has already added them to the Ketchikan mentor-training program. APTE and NEA-Alaska have some common goals. Among them are the development of a well-grounded mentor program and the establishment of a long-term approach to mentorships that effectively creates a "community of learners "environment in every school. Says Jones, "This collegial atmosphere will do more to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in schools that most other proposed reforms."

In addition to establishing mentoring programs, NEA-Alaska has also established a coaching program to provide support for teachers who are placed on a plan of improvement. Under Alaska tenure laws, if a tenured teacher placed on the improvement plan for 90–180 days fails to meet the standards of the plan, they are non-retained. Coaches provide support to enable teachers to reach specific goals and performance standards of the plan. Training for coaches focuses on diagnosing and prescribing remedies for teaching deficiencies.

Kronberg acknowledges that providing quality support for beginning teachers is more challenging in the rural and remote districts of Alaska. He has begun discussions with leaders of the Intertribal Council on jointly developing a cultural mentoring program for teachers new to a village. The retention rate of teachers in remote village schools is especially low. Some rural districts have teacher turnover rates in the 30–40 percent range and some village schools have 100 percent turnover from one year to the next. The cultural mentoring program would utilize aides and others from the village as "mentors "who can help acclimate the new teacher to the village culture.

In Oregon, teacher unions are spearheading efforts to develop teacher-mentoring programs. Over the last two years, members of the Oregon Education Association, Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, Oregon Department of Education, Oregon School Boards Association, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, and several universities (e.g.,Western Oregon University and Lewis and Clark College) have worked together on the Mentor Advocacy Partnership. The Partnership's focus is to promote an Oregon mentor program for new teachers in the state; that is, to reestablish the teacher mentor efforts that ran out of funding in the 1980s. A "mentor bill "has been submitted to the Oregon legislature, in part, to establish a fund or "seed money" that would support schools districts' efforts to develop and implement teacher mentor programs across the state.

Members of the Partnership are developing a teacher mentor handbook to guide districts in program development. Some of the key principles outlined in the handbook include taking time and care in "matching" mentor with protégé, as well as ensuring the development of both the mentor as well as the protégé throughout the process. Brad Lenhardt, a NWREL teacher development associate working on the handbook, notes that "a key element to the success of a mentor program is that in order for trust to be developed between the mentor and protégé, the mentoring cannot be part of the formal, summative evaluation process."

Oregon and Alaska are just two of many states where unions are actively involved in teacher mentoring and support.For more information about union involvement see the NEA Web site at http://www.nea.org or the AFT Web site at http://aft.org.