what new teachers want

I was out at a school last week and ran into a new teacher. She said that of all the things she needed support on, she was currently struggling the most with grading. She wasn't sure about her expectations for student work and how to evaluate it. Was she on the same page as the other teachers at her grade level? This conversation reminded me of an article in Educational Leadership from a couple of years ago. The article, What New Teachers Want From Colleagues written by Deborah Bieler, shared themes from conversations with new teachers about what their experience colleagues could do to help support new teachers.

Bieler, in her conversations with new teachers, found that above all else, new teachers are looking for help with teaching ideas, curriculum questions, classroom management, and someone to observe and reflect with them. And, the idea that connected to my conversation, help with grading. Grading is something that many teachers get less practice with throughout their preparation, while they get lots of practice writing lessons and teaching lessons, but collecting assignments, evaluating them, and using them to plan future instruction is something many new teachers feel less confident about. Grading an assignment given by the new teacher or a common grade-level assignment together with an experienced colleague could help enlighten the goals of the school/grade/department and help the new teacher feel more confident in their grading.

So what does this all mean? Well, maybe you have a faculty mentor and you can ask them for some support in these areas. OR, you can request that some of your grade-level or department meetings be devoted to curriculum, management, and grading. If you don't feel confident yet having this conversation with the whole group, perhaps bringing it up with one colleague and asking them if this could be a focus for common planning time would be a good place to start.