AFT Magazine Spotlights Teacher Retention

The latest American Educator spotlights problems of teacher retention (pay attention here!  not recruitment, retention). 

If you are an AFT member, it comes in the mail.  If you are a UFT member, you are also an AFT member and you get it.  Open.  Read carefully.  They don’t get everything right, but, man, do they hit most of the right issues.

If you are an experienced UFT member (or leader), read carefully.  What can we do?  We know what we ant the bad guys to do, but what can we do?  (as a union, as individual chapter leaders and individual chapters, as individual teachers. but mostly, as a union.)

And anyone can read on line.  Follow the link above or here. 

 

Excerpts follow –>

Seeking Success with Students
New Teachers Can’t Be Successful—but Won’t Stay in Teaching—Without Help from Their School

A huge wave of teacher retirements is spawning a raft of clever approaches to recruitment. But there’s no sense turning somersaults to recruit if we don’t fix the conditions that drive half of new teachers out. What drives them out? What keeps them?

Why New Teachers Leave …
By Leslie Baldacci

As a new teacher, Leslie Baldacci had six weeks of training, 35 seventh-graders, and obstacle after obstacle put between her and classroom success. She survived her first year, but she understands why so many of her peers did not.

… and Why New Teachers Stay
By Susan Moore Johnson and The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers

In teaching, there’s no corner office, no big payday. Teachers’ primary reward is seeing their students succeed. To retain teachers, one key piece is simple: Give new teachers the support they need to be effective in their first few years. Chances are, they’ll stay for years to come. That’s the message from the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers.

Teachers Transfer Because of Conditions, Not Seniority of Student Poverty

How Teacher Unions Can Support New Teachers

Why One Teacher Is Staying “Forever”