Minnesota First Five Mentorship Program
The Minnesota First Five Mentorship Program
In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Education applied for and was awarded a three-year Higher Education Act, Title II, Part A, Teacher Quality Enhancement (TQE) Grant to advance the comprehensive reforms already underway to develop and retain high quality teachers in Minnesota. The TQE grant was designed to address several needs, including the need to support new teachers as they enter the workforce, to continue to improve their skills and to decrease teacher turnover, particularly in high-need districts.
The First Five Mentorship Program was designed to support teachers in their first five years of teaching and serves three regions within the state – one in the metropolitan area including Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and surrounding school districts and two in rural Minnesota near concentrations of high-need schools in Southwest and Northwest Minnesota. The focus of the Mentorship Program is to build capacity of new teachers around content area knowledge, instructional practices and pedagogy.
In each of the three regions, mentoring teams are established and trained to work with new teachers working in high-needs schools in the area. The mentor teams provide support to the new teachers around classroom management, content mastery and other areas in which new teachers frequently need assistance (e.g., student engagement, student behavior, differentiation of instruction).
The mentor team includes a local mentor, a specialized mentor and a regional mentor. The local mentor is an experienced teacher recruited to orient new teachers to the school and provide support around classroom management, lesson planning and instruction. The specialized mentor provides support in the content area matching the new teachers’ teaching assignment, including more specific assistance with curriculum, instruction and assessment. The regional mentor leads the mentor team and provides training for new teachers and mentors in the region.
First Five Mentorship Program:
• Mentor teams
• Mentor training
• Orientation
• Seminars
• Teacher networks
• Collaboration time
• Observations
• Formative assessments
Each new teacher is paired with a local mentor, who worked closely with the new teacher. The local mentor involved other members of the mentoring team as needed, based on their particular skills, expertise and experience. New teachers met with their local mentor on a weekly basis. Mentors received training and a stipend for participation.
Together, the new teacher and local mentor identify accomplishments and challenges and connect the work to professional areas for growth as well as to students’ academic needs through regular self-assessment and goal setting. New teachers conduct self-assessments using the Minnesota Standards of Effective Practice for Teachers as a framework for their work. The common language helps the mentor and new teacher communicate clearly about the various areas of teaching and articulate what constitutes best practice. At the start of every quarter, new teachers completed action plans in collaboration with their local mentor to set goals around the standards and identify strategies for achieving them.
New teachers and mentors attend quarterly seminars focused, on classroom management, lesson planning, subject area mastery, instructional planning and instructional strategies. Opportunities for professional community are also available for new teachers through smaller Reflective Practice Groups (RPG), comprised of new teachers from the region, which met each quarter. RPGs are facilitated by the regional program coordinator and give new teachers an opportunity to reflect on and share their challenges and practices.
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