With goals of helping new teachers become successful, officials from Sampson County Schools are looking forward to more success with its Beginning Teacher Support Program.
The Board of Education recently approved to continue the district’s program, which includes support from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW).
Information was presented by Brenda Nordin, director of teacher support, during a recent work session for compliance purposes. She was joined by Somer Lewis of the UNCW’s Professional Development System at the Watson College of Education; and Lori Best, lead instructional coach for the N.C. New Teacher Support program.
During the Race to the Top program started by the United States Department of Education, a statewide initiative was created throughout the state. Attention was placed on low achieving schools and teacher retention.
“Since then, the Race to the Top dollars went away and the program has sort of morphed overtime,” Lewis said.
Currently, the program has three core focus areas for teachers in their first, second, and third year. The service includes a fall institute, which was described as a boot camp with sessions held in Raleigh and Charlotte.
The second core area of the program is professional development, which includes works with districts and school partners to target specific needs of teachers being served.
Next, the third piece is instructional coaching support through UNCW. Professionals are sent to different districts to work one-on-one with new teachers involved with the program. In Sampson County, the partnership through the university began in spring 2018 with a pilot program consisting of five teachers at Union Middle School and Union Middle School.
“This has been a big benefit for our teachers and I appreciate it,” Nordin said.
For the 2018-2019 period, the program was expanded to 10 teachers at five buildings in the Lakewood and Union districts. Best, a Sampson County native, lives in Newton Grove, and spends a lot of time with local educators and principals when it comes to needs for their beginning teachers.
“It’s very purposeful and intentional in increasing their growth and trying to retain teachers in Sampson County so that we don’t have so much turnover,” Best said.
For this year, a focus was placed on lateral entry teachers, who are qualified employees working to get a professional educator’s license as they teach.
“We know that we have wonderful teachers from Sampson County that are becoming lateral entry and they just need that additional knowledge about how students learn,” She said.
It was reported that lateral entry teachers performed higher in certain areas of the North Carolina Educator Evaluation System, than teachers who are not supported by the program.
UNCW is one of nine institutions across the state facilitating support for the statewide program. Along with Sampson, the university provides service to Columbus County.
“From a university standpoint, one of the things that we appreciate about the program is how it now aligns to the core instruction that we’re providing through our teacher educator preparation programs,” Lewis said.
When it comes to success and feedback, Lewis said teachers appreciate that a professional outside of the district offers help in a non-evaluative way.
“Lori is very much working hand in hand with instructional coaches and your administrators, with the teachers in your district,” she said. “She’s not someone who is coming in to evaluate that teacher, so that relationship is formed pretty quickly early on and they’re able to target key areas of growth for that particular teacher.”
According to statewide service data from last year, 1.4 million minutes of instructional feedback was given to teachers across the state. So far, during the 2018-2019 period, more than 80 visits were conducted, which totaled 1,710 minutes of instructional feedback. Lewis said more would have been recorded, but Hurricane Florence delayed the support.
University and school officials are also looking forward to the Well Fargo Foundation grant for spring 2019, which will offer three full days of professional development for 50 beginning teachers in the district.
A decision was made to target first- and second-year teachers. The grant will provide payment for program materials and payments for substitutes in the teacher’s absence. During the development sessions with keynote speakers and round table discussions, emphasis will be placed on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math); student engagement; and innovation throughout the district and classroom.
“We’re really excited to offer these opportunities,” Lewis said.