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Teachers SUPPORTING Lori Bird and Carol Burns spent last fall collaborating with new and existing partners to move closer to their mission of helping all teachers be effective, confident practitioners. A new partnership with the New Teacher Center in San Jose, California, frames a valuable opportunity to expand the scope and scale of the Center for Mentoring & Induction (CMI) at Minnesota State University, Mankato. To launch this partnership, the Center began collaborating with a consultation team of University and P-12 educators. The team seeks to develop a common program continuum that supports Minnesota State University, Mankato, graduates and other new teachers in PDS schools their first three years teaching. Teachers-On-Special-Assignment continue to be a vital force implementing new teacher support in the PDS mentor network. Many act as mentors and/or mentor leaders for their district, and many of their colleagues have contributed to the district’s program to provide school-wide support. Bird and Burns complement the district’s activities by offering current research-based mentoring practices, visiting PDS schools, training mentor leaders and co-creating a support model specific to the district’s needs. The New Teacher Center (NTC) is a national non-profit serving over 6,300 mentors and is dedicated to accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers. NTC’s consultation with CMI for this school year will “support our ongoing efforts to blur the boundaries between pre-service preparation and the beginning teacher’s experiences in P-12 systems. In addition, these activities build strong relationships with other education professionals such as mentors, supervisors, cooperating teachers, and fellow new teachers,” said Bird on the intended effects of the partnership. Bird and Burns collaborate and co-create consultation sessions with Rhonda Dubin, New Teacher Center consultant and director of the Southeastern Wisconsin New Teacher Project. Together, they guide the PDS/Minnesota State Mankato consultation team to identify existing practices and seek out new practices that will enhance program effectiveness. “I think the strength of this program is the fact there is already a partnership in place,” Dubin noted. “In In my experience, you can’t impact the effectiveness of new teachers without that positive relationship as the starting point. – Rhonda Dubin Teachers my experience, you can’t impact the effectiveness of new teachers without that positive relationship as the starting point. My goal now is to help deepen the support of new teachers, because everything we do is based on helping students succeed.” Dubin helped lead the Southeastern Wisconsin New Teacher Project from a consortium of 9 districts five and a half years ago to 25 this year. In an effort to break the cycle of attrition common to new teachers, the Project helped one school almost double their retention rate to keep 91% of their new teachers. The vast majority of mentors, administrators, and new teachers within 3 years who were involved in the project reported a positive gain on students’ learning in their new teachers’ classrooms. “I think the work on mentoring and induction is critical work. We need to know how we can help new teachers in the long-term, keep them in our schools, and make them successful,” explained Brian Dietz, Superintendent of Waseca Public Schools and contributing team member. His participation on the team represents the Center’s desire to include administrative support in all their efforts. He continued, “That requires developing systems and processes that can be adaptive on the job. The New Teacher Center brings a scope and sequence to the team’s work. The meetings bring together P12 and higher education, we look at our strengths and challenges as partners and we’re building a blueprint to say that this is what we all agree on.” As the new partnership puts scaffolding in place, the current state of mentor networks vary from district to district. An opportunity to plan and implement common goals and objectives marks a collective step in the right direction. Le Seuer-Henderson TOSA’s, Jayne Gehrke and April Rosendale, have helped facilitate their district’s mentor program since its inception in the 2005-06 school year. Working closely with their administration, they have helped secure a mentor for each new teacher in the district for two years, continuing support throughout the third year. Mentors and mentees generally meet on a weekly basis, attend monthly seminars and/or workshops, and complete 3 observations with selective 12 http://ed.mnsu.edu/csup/
QUT students and exchange program faculty with Principal Rick Lund, Rosa Parks Elementary School, during 10-day field experience. emphases. They help organize training before the school year starts and midway through the year, where mentor-teachers are encouraged to lead and train the new teachers. “New and veteran teachers are seeing the value in having a listening ear and helping others through the processes of teaching,” Rosendale describes of their staff development. “The New Teacher Center aligns well with NExT goals, in creating a continuum of support from field experiences to veteran teaching.” Gehrke agrees, “We want teachers to have a dynamic year, Winter 2012 Partnership Global Collaboration Queensland University of Technology (QUT) collaborates with Minnesota State Mankato PDS partners Australian students from QUT in Brisbane, Australia, visited Mankato Area Public Schools for the second year in a row last November and December. Lori Bird coordinated the experience for eight students through an existing partnership between QUT and Minnesota State Mankato. Although the primary reason for the exchange was the elementary field experience, the students lived with Mankato families and attended typical social and recreational events in the new culture. Megan Goodall and Yasmine Pearce both student-taught within kindergarten classrooms at Rosa Parks Elementary for three weeks. They appreciated the first real snow this winter and gained valuable cross-cultural teaching experiences, enhancing their abilities to be flexible, adapt, and solve problems. Megan noted the community spirit inherent to the Mankato school. She appreciated the fact that all students learned together in one building, unlike some schools back home that housed multiple buildings students traveled between for different classes. Rosa Parks seemed to build a culture of celebrating students’ work and accomplishments. Yasmine admired the ability to gain intentional learning in the how’s and why’s of teaching since the curriculum seemed to be so well-developed. Both teacher candidates will begin For more information on Bird and Hudson’s collaborative research, see the Fall 2011 issue of Frontiers magazine online, published on the College of Graduate Studies & Research webpage. QUT students who visited and cooperating staff from Rosa Parks Elementary Leah Gilmour Megan Goodall Kayla Hawkins Alex Hodgson Saraya Kirby Yasmin Pearce Nikkilee Portas Belle Waterford every year, and we’re very interested in making it work. The New Teacher Center can help get us there.” The Minnesota State Mankato/NTC consultation team will present the results from their work with other PDS stakeholders this spring. “Our partnership with NTC is just in its infancy,” said Bird. “We anticipate an ongoing relationship that will only strengthen our ability to continue to support our graduates, beginning teachers, and our school partners for years to come.” Updates on its findings will be included in the spring/summer issue of Partnership. teaching soon after graduation, two days after returning home. QUT faculty Dr. Peter Hudson and Suzanne Hudson accompanied the students and spent three weeks interacting with Rosa Parks staff and University faculty at Minnesota State Mankato. Both are project leaders of Mentoring for Effective Teaching (MET), a collaborative faculty project dedicating to improving teacher practice for their education students, through mentoring by master teachers in Australian schools. A long-running partnership with QUT concurrently fostered Bird a chance to conduct research with Dr. Hudson that compared Australian Jennifer Klunz, Kindergarten Deb Butzer, 2nd Grade Denise Geistfeld, Kindergarten Susan Levandowski, 5th Grade Jamie Coon, 3rd Grade Barb Enderlee, Physical Education Amy Metcalf, 3rd Grade Diane Shelton, Kindergarten Emily Lowry, 4th Grade and American teacher candidates’ perceptions on mentoring principles. The recent exchange allowed Dr. and Mrs. Hudson to lead a day of professional development for TOSA’s and University faculty on their project research. In addition to the concepts inherent to the MET program, Minnesota State Mankato educators were able to compare respective mentoring techniques. Their visit marks another opportunity to enhance CMI’s capability of incorporating best practices in mentoring relationships. The solid partnership contributes to both University’s goals in developing stronger teacher candidates for their schools, which steadily contributes to better teaching in a global education learning community. 13
Page 1 and 2: artnership PCENTER FOR SCHOOL-UNIVE
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS Winter 2012 Partn
Page 5 and 6: Note From the Editor Ben Pendarvis
Page 7 and 8: Heather Verstraete, Bloomington TOS
Page 9 and 10: of the Leadership Institute, which
Page 11 and 12: How has AVID impacted your school,
Page 13: ng Deeper and Wider Pipeline #2 - P
Page 17 and 18: After the last full school year of
Page 19 and 20: Marti Sievek can speak to the posit
Page 21 and 22: 7th Annual Fall Play Therapy Confer
Page 23 and 24: Innovative Program Targets Coaching
Page 25 and 26: if a student can make one strong co
Page 27 and 28: Teaching Fellows ? ? Describe your
Page 29 and 30: Jenna Haala Graduate Program: Maste
Page 31 and 32: New Systems for Working Together Th

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