Barely one month after starting his first job as a public school teacher, Tod Rejholec nearly quit.
But that was in a Downstate school district, where he received little support from fellow teachers or administrators. Instead of changing careers, Rejholec decided to give teaching another chance by changing school districts in the fall.
Now he is a teacher at McHenry Middle School in McHenry, where he teaches 8th-grade language arts. Thanks to fellow teacher Trish Hoglund, who has been his “mentor,” Rejholec is much more comfortable teaching in McHenry than in the southern Illinois district where his career began.
“It’s a much easier adjustment here,” he said. “There are all kinds of procedures that new teachers need to learn. How do we take attendance? How do we handle kids who are late for class? If I need an extra desk in my room, how do I get it? If I need a VCR, what’s the procedure? What do I need to do to get ready for parent-teacher conferences?
“My mentor is right next door to my classroom,” Rejholec said. “It’s nice to have someone who has had the same questions to go to for help. Because she had the same questions [when she was new to the district], she doesn’t laugh at my questions. She’s always available to talk.”
(Hoglund recently started a maternity leave. In her absence, teacher Amy Devine will step in as Rejholec’s mentor.)
In his first school district, Rejholec said, “I was told, this is my room. That was about it.”
Rejholec is not the only new teacher who has thought about quitting the profession. Nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within 5 years, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.
Rejholec also is not alone in being able to rely on a veteran teacher for help. About two-thirds of Illinois’ 869 school districts have mentor arrangements, according to the state board. But state education officials point to the dropout rate of new teachers as evidence that the mentor programs need to be beefed up.
The state board last year proposed requiring that every new teacher participate in a mentoring-induction program, attend state-approved professional development seminars and compile an analysis of their career development during their first 3 years on the job. The state board also would require formal training for local school district administrators and the veteran teachers selected as mentors.
This would be a much more structured mentor program than the one in McHenry and in most other Illinois school districts.
The reason for the proposal is simple, said Mike Long, the state board’s division administrator for professional preparation.
“Every bit of research we’ve looked at, and in some states they’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years, shows that if we want to be successful in keeping more people in the profession, we’d better include this as a critical component,” Long said.
He said 20 percent of new teachers in Illinois leave the profession by the end of their second year.
Research shows difficulty adjusting to the classroom environment is a big reason for the turnover. Induction and mentor programs ease the adjustment, Long said, with the mentoring part being perhaps the more important.
“By giving a young teacher a veteran or group of veteran teachers to work with–teachers who have experienced what the new teacher is going through and figured out ways to cope–we hope to cut down on the number of early withdrawals from the profession and improve the effectiveness of the new teachers,” Long said.
Besides the loss of experience, there is also a monetary expense when new teachers decide to change professions, but those numbers are hard to compile.
“We have no hard data on that,” Long said. “Few states do.”
He said the ISBE has asked other states and gotten estimates that range from $1,000 to more than $50,000. The ISBE also randomly asked the question of Illinois school districts, and most said they don’t know.
The ISBE’s best estimate is about $4,000. This includes the cost to advertise for job openings, interview candidates and provide training to new hires.
“But that’s a soft number,” Long said. “My guess is that there are probably big differences from district to district and depending on the field [of teaching].”
Long said he expects legislation to support the State Board of Education’s recommendation to reach the General Assembly this spring. He has no cost estimate but said 19 of the 28 states that have such programs fund them out of their state budgets rather than forcing local school districts to foot the bill. An additional nine states are about to require such programs, Long said, and most of them will provide state funding. The state board recommends that Illinois do the same.
Illinois has about 120,000 public school teachers, 10,000 of them in their first year of teaching, Long said. In McHenry Elementary School District 15, about 35 of the district’s 325 teachers are new this year, said Bill Burke, the district’s director of learning. Burke said that in addition to a standard four-day orientation for new teachers, the district this year set aside two days for new teachers to work with their mentors to get their classroom in order, study their teaching materials and organize the first few weeks of lessons.
Burke also has asked the mentors to regularly meet with their “proteges” and discuss classroom issues, including lesson design and different ways to teach students who might be falling behind. Proteges and mentors are also being surveyed to determine ways to improve the program.
Hoglund, Rejholec’s mentor, said she decided to volunteer her help because of the experience she had as a new teacher 5 years ago.
“I know I could have used a mentor when I started,” Hoglund said. “There are so many things that people just assume you know. But you don’t know. Making sure you have mid-quarter grades done is an example. What do you actually have to do? That was something that I muddled through my first year.”
They also discuss broader issues, such as classroom discipline.
“What’s working? What’s not? How can we fix the problem? No matter what you do in college, discipline is something that is not taught,” Hoglund said. “A new teacher has to talk about it with people who’ve been through it. Meetings are scheduled, but the new teachers know they can walk into their mentor’s classroom whenever they need help with something.”
