What Beginning Teachers At Hard-to-Staff Schools Say...

San Diego Dialogue, on behalf of the Partners for K-12 School Reform, held a series of informal discussions with new teachers assigned to some of the region's lowest performing schools.

"The services would keep me at this school...They are cutting the support and our job becomes double, triple the work." Teachers need counselors and nurses to help children so that teachers can focus on teaching. They want administrators who set a good tone for the school, adequate supplies, and aides to work with the kids who fall through the cracks or to free up teachers to focus on problem students.

"I can't have academic rigor with discipline problems and too many kids in the class." Most of the teachers' frustration stems from discipline problems. Teachers feel that they need to be self-sufficient in handling discipline problems because there is no place for the difficult children to go. A school site discipline plan would be helpful. Counselors are being cut, yet this is exactly the type of support teachers feel they need.

"There is really a sense of isolation in your classroom." New teachers crave support from veteran/mentor teachers who work at their site and who know their kids. Veteran teachers don't, however, have time to observe and support new teachers. Teachers need time set aside to learn from other teachers. In some schools, the presence of math specialists has provided a much welcome opportunity for teachers to have time each day to do this.