Mentoring and Induction for New Teachers - CPS, NEIU, RU, LU, ISU: Four universities provide staff to assist in the CPS induction program for second year teachers.
and Golden Teacher - ISU, NEIU, LU, and RU work with CPS to support professional development for second year beginning teachers. (To save as a Word document use the link above)

MINT and Golden Teachers are projects of the Chicago Public Schools. IPLP supports and provides faculty and consultants to act as lead presenters and small group facilitators. IPLP also provided consultation and technical support to the design of the training ,the evaluation process and training of other lead presenters and facilitators. Lead facilitators from NEIU: Heather Patay, Michael Pietrzak, Beverly Rowls, Susan Garr, Drew Tessler, Amy Hafter. Currently Zoe Keithley and Beverly Rowls are active in reshaping the new GOLDEN project.

In addition in 2001-2003 IPLP facilitators recruited by CPS participated in training sessions led by CPS, Chicago Teachers' Union and IPLP faculty using a fully collaborative design and interactive hands on train the trainer model.

The same team developed the 5-session hybrid small group interactive model during 2000-2001 year. While IPLP facilitators and lead presenters worked at multiple sites in the first year they were only able to do the small group model at the Chicago Teachers' Center site.In the second year teachers met with facilitators to design their on-going professional development.

The NEIU faculty also developed and implemented the distance learning component of the 2000-2001 MINT program. This initiative was led by Dr. Steven Brown and Michael Pietrzak.

In 2001-2002 MINT teachers attended five sessions to create a teaching portfolio. Teacher sign-in sheets and evaluation forms for each session were collected and returned to the CPS mentoring program and analyzed and compiled by IPLP at Mcdill Teachers Academy. For the Golden Teachers program, teachers completed the application form for their personal learning plan.

MINT evaluation forms collected for the 2nd year teacher planning sessions indicated that second year teachers have difficulty reflecting on practice, IPLP faculty was trained by Chicago Teachers' Union and ISU faculty in the rubric for evaluation portfolios of second year teachers. IPLP faculty then read portfolios and revised the rubric. Review of the portfolios identified these areas that indicate 1. where 2nd year teachers are developmentally in their capacity to form instruction and 2. data important to pre-service teacher education programs in seeing where their programs could provide some additional learning support for their students: IPLP found that 2nd year teachers can articulate or describe cultural, racial, linguistic and learner need but cannot apply to forming or implementing instruction, can articulate special education and inclusion issues but cannot implement in instruction and finally that 2nd year teachers were unable to separate formative and performance assessment that informs instruction from summative quizzes and tests

Evaluations filled out by 2nd year teachers in MINT indicate that district policy can impact teacher attitudes about professional development, second year teachers are hungry for ideas and support to enhance their effectiveness, second year teachers are more likely to participate in activities that have direct application in practice.

Additional study of the MINT evaluations was done as part of the CPS Human Capitol Initiative on New Teacher Mentoring, Induction, Recruitment and Retention in Spring and Summer of 2002. Bob Fisher and Heather Patay sat on two of these committees along with CPS central office administrators, CPS human resource personnel, and consultants from the McKenzie Group.

As a result of these task force reports and the evaluation studies the Chicago Public School system has modified their induction and mentoring program each year for the past several years.

New Teacher Seminar is an NEIU course.

In 2000-2001 Dr. Charles Pistoria designed a classroom vignette and case based >course for new teachers and piloted the course in 2000-2001. Course was facilitated by Dr. Pastorio, two faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences, two high school teachers, two principals -Dr. Joe Garvey (H.S.) and Dr. Barbara Jackson (K-8) and a faculty member from Ed. Leadership. It was held after school at Schurz High School

2001-2002 and 2002-2003 Joe Garvey, retired high school principal, Robert White and Mike ? high school teachers and Pat Woodson Assistant Principal at Vaughn Occupational High School, a New Teacher Seminar for new teachers teaching in high need CPS schools.

The same course was offered at Cook Elementary by Dr. Barbara Johnson and Dr. Sharon Bean for new teachers on the south and south west side. Report and data are on the NEIU/IPLP web site. In 2002-2003 Dr. Garvey assumed leadership of the new teacher seminar project.

For the New Teacher Seminar, students were contacted two years later and asked to reflect on the experience and to indicate whether they were still teaching. For the New Teachers' Seminar, all the teachers in their first year (2000-2001) are still teaching (fall 2002). For the New Teachers Seminar, support for novice teachers appears to be essential and collaboration with other teachers in the seminar is a natural outcome.

In 2002-2003 Dean Giblin. Susan Appel Bass and the Alumni of NEIU COE initiated an alumni mentoring program. This program is in the design phase, but the following has occurred (1) Survey of alumni to determine interest, (2) Meetings with alumni (3) A dinner celebrating distinguished award winning alumni, (4) Establishment of a working group, (5) Planning meeting between the alumni working group, Dean Giblin, faculty from Teachers Ed, faculty from Special Ed and IPLP director and director of mentoring and induction, Joe Garvey. This effort is coordinated by Susan Appel Bass. The next step is a focus group with the juniors and seniors in IPLP cohorts facilitated by the alumni and Dr. Giblin. Data from the focus group will be used to determine the focus and plan for the mentoring. Mentors will be matched with IPLP juniors and seniors.



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