Leveraging Experience and Expertise to Support New Teachers

• In Event: Teacher-Leaders as Critical Researchers: Exploring Critical Teacher Leadership in Practice

Abstract

The final presenter is a teacher-leader with 34 years of classroom teaching experience and is currently positioned in her first year as a district director for new teacher recruitment and retention. Considering that the school district of interest recently had to replace entire departments at several schools due to mass resignations, the objective of the presentation is to explore the teacher-researchers’ approaches and practices for retaining teachers in the district, with an emphasis on teachers at the novice level.

Research on teacher leadership and its impact on teacher retention discusses several factors that positively influence teacher retention: collaboration, professional development, and supportive leadership (Dauksas & White, 2010). When looking specifically at teacher leadership and new teacher retention, the literature, while sparse, shows that novice teachers are least likely to resign if provided supportive leadership from caring and engaged colleagues and superiors (Ortiz, 2014). Taking supportive leadership, teacher leadership, and CTL together, the study is essentially framed by practices associated with support, collaboration, and criticality.

As a teacher-leader with decades of classroom teaching and leadership experience, the research design uses autoethnographic methods to uncover how and to what extent her breadth of experiences influences new teacher retention. The study will use self-portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005) and narrative inquiry (Mertova & Webster, 2019), inviting critical observations of her life and work as a Black woman and teacher-leader seeking to usher in a new generation of teachers.

Preliminary findings show that the teacher-researcher’s background in a district that has not yet had a school leader of color during her tenure weighs heavily on her work with new teachers, particularly those from underrepresented groups. Additionally, results demonstrate that her identity as a practitioner-scholar provides the opportunity to model that teachers should be “intelligent mediums of action” (Dewey, 1895). Lastly, emerging findings emphasize the teacher-researcher’s vital ability to build caring and collaborative relationships with new teachers.

Whiles studies have found that teacher leadership is correlated with teacher retention, this is mostly true for teachers who are given the opportunity to exercise leadership. For example, York-Barr & Duke (2004) found that the strongest effects of teacher leadership have been on teacher leaders themselves” (p. 282). Therefore, the study is significant because it has the potential to identify specific teacher-leader epistemologies, beliefs, and practices that target teacher retention for all classroom teachers regardless of leadership experience and/or opportunity.

As a project framed CTL, the study extends teacher advocacy to include advocating for students and colleagues, particularly new teachers who are the most susceptible to leaving the profession. And, like Presentation 2, focuses on relationship-building and methodological approach. By using autoethnographic methods to humanize and elevate the teacher-researchers’ lived experiences, the study creates pathways for making sense of the teacher-researcher’s epistemologies and experiences as she interacts with new teachers for their and students’ overall success. Given that much of the teacher leadership research looks at teacher-leaders (Knapp, 2017), this study is different in that it allows the teacher-researcher to look inward and self-actualize a distinctly personal definition of teacher leadership.

Author

• MaryBeth A. Sanders, Hamilton County Department of Education
  Presenting Author