The school board for Joliet Township High School District 204 has approved a plan to create a mentoring program next year for teachers who will be starting their first job in the profession.
The district expects to hire 12 to 15 new teachers for the 2001-02 school year, said Paul Swanstrom, assistant superintendent for education. The district knows that at least eight teachers and administrators will leave at the end of the school year, he said.
Teachers at the schools who have been recognized for their excellence will work with up to eight new teachers, Swanstrom said. The assignments won’t necessarily be based on the teachers working in the same department.
Swanstrom said the new teachers will continue to meet for two days before school starts and once a month during the year. The mentoring program will be “more formalized,” allowing the mentors to spend two to four hours a day with the new teachers, he said.
“The idea is to provide them with the support necessary to help them become as effective as possible in working with our students and as quickly as possible,” Swanstrom said. “The program will be a real positive approach because it will welcome them into our teaching family.
“We have to make sure they have support in the process of teaching. We assume that when we hire someone that they have content knowledge. But there are a multitude of things that we expect teachers to do, and so the mentor is to help them adjust to those requirements.”
Wilmington Community Unit School District 209-U has operated a mentoring program for several years, and Illinois School Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee has indicated that the state is willing to support such programs, Swanstrom said.
The program will cost the district, which operates Joliet Central and Joliet West High Schools, about $50,000.
