KEYWORDS: AVID, ALICE, Culturally Relevant Teaching, Safe School Ambassadors, Vasily Sukhomlinsky

ABSTRACT: All 50 states and the District of Columbia require teacher preparation programs to address state and national standards, including the foundational standards authored by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, or inTASC (Webb & Metha, 2017). While the standards address the substrative areas of instruction, assessment, and professional responsibilities, the learning and developmental needs of students are fluid, and additional supports for teachers to meet these needs may be necessary based on demographic location, student experience, and grade level.  The present paper considers both general recommendations for teacher preparation programs serving pre-service teachers in Washington State, as well as a recommendation for district-level service delivery to address the needs of new teachers.

Introduction

As a middle school-level administrator, I have the privilege of assisting, coaching, and evaluating an average of 24 certificated staff members each year. These teachers represent all of the core content areas, as well as the electives and STEM class sections. As I enter my third year as an administrator, I am finding I am passionate about working with a particular group of educators on this team: brand new teachers who are in their first and second years of service. I strive to be dutiful in my service to these teachers, providing them with extra “check-ins” and informal observation feedback throughout the year. Additionally, I serve on the advisory board of the Lake Washington School District New Teacher Support Program (NTSP) and am afforded the opportunity to provide feedback to the Director of Professional Learning on how best to meet the needs of these burgeoning teachers based on what I am seeing at our school and during Learning Walks2 throughout the district.

These early-career educators herald from teacher preparation programs at institutions across the state, including Northwest University, Western Washington University, Central Washington University, the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Seattle Pacific University. In my work as an evaluator, I have found that each of these universities has done a thorough and efficacious job of preparing these new teachers based on both national inTASC standards3 and the benchmarks of the Washington Administrative Codes that guide teacher certification programs. This is evidenced by the fact that all new teachers whom I observe have received scores of “proficient” in all indicators and domains of the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument (2011).4  There are, however, commonalities I have observed in the learning and support needs of new teachers, regardless of the program from which they have graduated. Included in this paper are recommendations on ways in which to address these needs, specifically in the areas of (a) student emotional and physical safety, (b) closing the achievement and opportunity gaps, and (c) professional growth and development.

Recommendations

Enhancing Physical and Emotional Safety through Two Powerful Acronyms: ALICE and SSA

While as an administrator I don many hats and responsibilities (instructional leader, purveyor of behavioral support, etc.), my paramount responsibility is to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all children and adults at our school. In terms of physical safety, this includes establishing protocols and contingency plans for different scenarios, taking students and staff through drills, and most recently training staff, students, and parents on the new ALICE program adopted throughout the district. Webb and Metha remind us that we are in loco parentis (“in place of the parent”), and as such we are responsible for establishing and maintaining a safe learning environment (2017, p. 316). This is the most important mantle I carry, and it serves as a foundation for almost every decision I make as a leader.

Created by a Dallas, Texas police officer in the wake of the Columbine tragedy5, ALICE is an active shooter protocol that provides students and teachers with a menu of options with which to respond in the event of an armed intruder on campus (“Active Shooter Response Training,” 2016). The acronym stands for “Alert,” “Lockdown,” “Inform,” “Counter,” and “Evacuate,” and in schools that use the program, individuals are empowered to make a decision appropriate to their situation, whether it be to lockdown in place or evacuate away from the school to a secure location.

Lake Washington is one of over 3,700 school districts that have been trained in the program across all 50 states (2016). Throughout the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, all administrators, teachers, and students in Lake Washington received training on the program, followed by tabletop drills in which teachers and students discussed responses to different scenarios posed for each building. These school-level trainings and drills were followed by parent and community meetings in which the program was presented to families in each of Lake Washington’s four Learning Communities. The result has been the establishment of a common language around safety used by all members of the system.

Due to the urgency of our responsibility to maintain the physical safety of all students we serve, my first recommendation is that ALICE be adopted as a statewide program in which all preservice teachers are trained during their student teaching experience. This would ensure that all beginning teachers enter the classroom with a keen focus on securing student safety, as well as a skill set for responding to an unsafe school situation. Further, it would provide all teachers throughout the state with a common vernacular through which to discuss and brainstorm solutions to issues of physical safety at their schools, regardless of the district in which they work.

In addition to physical safety, teachers and administrators are also responsible for the emotional safety and well-being of all students. This includes both responsibilities to report and respond to acts of harassment, intimidation, and bullying (Lake Washington School District, 2011), as well as providing general character education for every student. This is in line with the theoretical beliefs of Ukrainian educator Vasily Sukhomlinksy, who believed it was his responsibility to “inculcate in his students the values of compassion and service, combined with sensitivity to beauty in nature, art, and human relationships” (Cockerill, 2011).

At our middle school, part of our character education program includes training students and staff in tenets of the Safe School Ambassadors (SSA) program. SSA is a research-based violence prevention and anti-bullying program that “trains and mobilizes ‘socially influential’ students” to become “agents of change -- Ambassadors -- and moves them from being bystanders to ‘upstanders’ who are willing to stand up to mistreatment” (Community Matters, 2015, p. 5). In participating in the program, students learn a menu of options for responding to incidences of harassment and bullying, from reasoning with the aggressor, to distracting students from inappropriate behavior, to connecting victims with adults and appropriate resources. The result in our school has been a reduction in reports of harassment, intimidation, and bullying by over 50% in the 2015-2016 school year as compared to reported incidents from the 2014-2015 academic year. Further, the program has fostered leadership opportunities for the student ambassadors, as they are tasked with educating peers on the tenets of the program.

Due to the success of the program in addressing harassing behavior at our middle school (and at other secondary schools throughout the district), my second recommendation is that all pre-service teachers receive exposure to and training in programs such as Safe School Ambassadors during their preparation coursework. This will ensure that all new teachers enter the classroom with a skillset around how to talk to students about responding to incidences of harassment, intimidation, and bullying, and it will assist new teachers in being aware of such antisocial behaviors in their classrooms. In addition, it will heighten the awareness of new educators as to the opportunity gaps and social pressures being experienced by students outside of a teacher’s cultural background and social context.        

Addressing Achievement and Opportunity Gaps through the Implementation of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Throughout my doctoral studies, I have discovered some striking information about student achievement and the challenges facing many of our traditionally underserved students. Webb and Metha note that while gains have been made in closing the attainment and achievement gaps for minority students, “the achievement gap between white and black students and between white and Hispanic students remains” (2017, p. 206). The compounding result is gaps in academic attainment and lower graduation rates for these students throughout the United States. In 2014, 33% of Hispanic students over age 25 had dropped out of high school, as compared to 7% of white students in that age cohort. Drop-out rates for Native American (22%) and African American students (13%) in 2014 were also unsettlingly high as compared to their white peers (2017, p. 207).

At our middle school, we are addressing the achievement and opportunity gap of our students in part through the implementation of the AVID Culturally Relevant Teaching (CRT) program (Boyko et. al., 2016). Culturally Relevant Teaching addresses multiple aspects of the instructional program, including (a) issues of culture and climate, (b) broadening the types and modalities of instructional strategies used in the classroom, and (c) the use of curricular materials and instructional examples that reflect the composition of the students enrolled in a class. In addition, the program challenges teachers to address their expectations for students as well as their personal privilege. The desire of the administrative team at our school is that a focus in these areas will establish a positive and supportive environment and provide the instructional resources needed for our underserved students to flourish personally and academically.

While I know preparation programs address this issue with pre-service teachers, my recommendation in this area is that these teachers receive a ‘deeper dive,’ particularly in terms of instructional strategies and practices that meet the needs of traditionally underserved students. To meet this end, universities could expose pre-service teachers to research based curricula, such as the AVID CRT program. The power and effectiveness of the CRT program is its versatility and applicability across content areas. CRT resources pertaining to establishing a welcoming classroom environment, or integrating literature and curricular materials reflective of the student population can be implemented with efficacy across the school in classrooms ranging from Language Arts to Mathematics. 

Reinforcing the Paradigm of the Lifelong Learner: Expanding Teacher Mentoring Programs to include a Third Year Peer-to-Peer Component

Unlike many other professions in which new members of a vocation enter their fields as “junior” members who gradually progress through the ranks while working alongside veteran practitioners, teachers new to our profession face unique challenges. In the field of education, newly minted teachers are largely expected to jump right into their classrooms and “to assume the same responsibilities as experienced teachers” (Webb & Metha, 2017, p. 33). To address the needs of new teachers and assist in their transitions from pre-service to beginning teachers, over half of the states require new practitioners to participate in a mentoring and induction program (2017).

Washington is among the states that require participation in a program of this nature by all new teachers. Known as the Beginning Educator Support Team (BEST), the program is based on a series of induction standards and has three stated goals: (a) to reduce turnover in Washington classrooms, (b) to improve educator quality for student learning, and (c) to ensure equity of learning opportunity for all students (Yoshida, Jessett, & Braaten, 2016). When these goals are achieved, student learning is improved in our state. As the leads for the BEST program explain, “when we set up our novice teachers for success, we set up their students for success” (2016).

In the Lake Washington School District, new professionals participate for two years in the district’s “New Teacher Support Program” (NTSP), and therein lies my final recommendation: I propose the expansion of the program to include a third, transitional year in which third year educators are both recipients of professional learning through the program, as well as leaders who assume some of the mentoring and delivery roles for first-year teachers.

One of the universal pieces of feedback I hear from the second year teachers with whom I work is that they value the learning and collaboration they experience in the program, and they wish it could continue into the future. If third year teachers were given some of the responsibilities to deliver initial learning to their first year colleagues (specifically in the areas of instructional practice and the LWSD instructional frameworks and Power Standards), not only would it reinforce their own knowledge in these areas, but it would free up the resources and time of the LWSD Professional Learning department to provide additional learning and resources appropriate to the needs of third year practitioners. Further, it would reinforce the message of the current “Year Two Green Line” development model guiding the work of the LWSD New Teacher Support Program, in which Domain Four of the Danielson teacher evaluation Framework6: Professional Practice (“exhibiting collaborative and collegial practices focused on improving instructional practice and student learning”) is emphasized (Lake Washington School District, 2016).  

Conclusion

The Lake Washington School District has a powerful vision that guides all aspects of its work: “Every Student Future Ready: prepared for college, prepared for the global workplace, and prepared for personal success” (Lake Washington School District, 2013). When we support new teachers and meet their professional learning needs, we in turn support the success of our students and bring this vision to life. In order to maintain this vision, however, we must constantly review and reevaluate our preparatory and professional learning practices for our newest professionals to make sure their needs are being met. This practice will help to ensure the longevity and satisfaction of these educators, and most importantly, the academic, social, and emotional success of the students we serve.  

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References

Active shooter response training: ALICE training. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.alicetraining.com/. 

Boyko, T., Briggs, P., Cobb, M., Dragoo, H., Ferreira, L., O’Connor, J., & Sanders, J. (2016). AVID culturally relevant teaching: A schoolwide approach. San Diego, CA: AVID Press.

Cockerill, A. (2011). Values education in the Soviet State: The lasting contribution of V.A. Sukhomlinksy. International Journal of Educational Research, 50, 198-204. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2011.07.005. 

Community Matters. (2015). Safe school ambassadors program advisor’s handbook.

Santa Rosa, CA: Community Matters.

Danielson, C. (2011). The framework for teaching evaluation instrument (1st ed.).

Princeton, NJ: The Danielson Group.

Lake Washington School District. (2016). Danielson’s framework for teaching -- year one and two priority model: The green line.

Lake Washington School District. (2011). Harassment, intimidation, and bullying of students (File: JFD). Retrieved from http://www.lwsd.org/About/Policies-http://www.lwsd.org/About/Policies-%20%20%20%0dRegulations/Admin-Policies/Students/Pages/Harassment-Intimidation-%20%0dBullying.aspx">Regulations/Admin-Policies/Students/Pages/Harassment-Intimidation-Bullying.aspx.

Lake Washington School District. (2013). Lake Washington school district strategic plan, 2013-2018.

Webb, D., & Metha, A. (2017). Foundations in American education (8th ed.). Boston, Ma: Pearson.

Yoshida, M., Jessett, G., & Braaten, C. (2016, July 21). Beginning educator support team: Support for new teachers in Washington state through comprehensive induction. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/BEST/.