Search

This report describes several ways for experienced teachers to function as a colleague and provide assistance to beginning teachers. The interaction strategies described are supported by illustrations from the data base of the Model Teacher Induction Project (MTIP), a study of first-year teachers and their support teachers. The three types of assistance that experienced teachers can provide include impromptu conversations, prearranged conferences which can have a pre-established or an emergent agenda, and classroom observations. The suggested procedure for the observation involving a beginning teacher and his/her support teacher was for the pair to determine the focus of the observation in a pre-observation conference, for the observer to take notes during the observation and organize those notes after the observation, and for the two teachers to discuss the observation as colleagues during a follow-up conference. Each of these types of assistance described in this report were utilized in the MTIP and were perceived as helpful by the beginning teachers involved. It is likely that the strategies illustrated here could contribute significantly to the repertoire of assistance techniques used by support teachers in a variety of induction programs. (Author/JD)