June 2005 — Industry Perspective
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No Teacher Left Behind
Cultivating and Leveraging a Sense of Community
With current attrition rates hovering near 50 percent in the first three years of teachers’ careers, there is no overstating the importance of creating a support network for new teachers. That’s why many of our users rely on eLearning applications to not only deliver professional development, but to aid the building of a professional community.
Regional and local professional communities employ these tools to exchange ideas, curricula, and best practices,and to conduct mentoring programs to encourage teacher retention and furnish ongoing support. The technology can be used to support broad, open-forum discussions, as well as private teacher-to-mentor or teacher-to-supervisor communication. Also, teachers can now connect at any time with other teachers, peers, and mentors anywhere. This helps to eliminate the traditional sense of isolation that many new teachers feel.
Solving Real-World Problems
As US educators extend eLearning potential into professional growth, our challenge as a community is to provide ongoing support for these innovations, while learning and sharing more about their effectiveness.
Through online professional learning, we can now create state, regional, and local networks to provide today’s educators with real support systems that make resources and peer communities readily accessible. To build these networks, we must explore the policy environments that support their creation and capacities—both human and technological—which need to be put in place to allow for such networks to flourish. It is important for our community to build upon initial efforts by the National Staff Development Council and others to define benchmarks for evaluating the effectiveness of online professional learning solutions.
At the end of the day, the promise of technology is not to replace wholesale what has worked well in modern professional development. Instead, eLearning has shown its promise to cost-effectively extend opportunities for professional growth and community building. These options are particularly timely now, because in order to leave no child behind, we must also be sure that we leave no teacher behind in the quest to deliver high-quality instruction.
STATES GET CREATIVE WITH ONLINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES
Louisiana State Department of Education
www.d'e.state.la.us/lde
Over the last three years, Louisiana has
augmented dozens of statewide professional
development initiatives, such as
its Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationsupported
program for superintendents,
with supplemental or completely online
courses and resources.
Alabama Online High School
www.aohs.state.al.us
Alabama has begun to put a dent in its
teacher shortage by recruiting retired
educators to teach courses online—from
wherever they are located.
Southeast Kansas Education Service Center (aka Greenbush)
www.greenbush.org
“Virtual Greenbush” has developed and
delivered a range of professional development
programs to rural teachers
across Kansas. Greenbush is expanding
these programs as small districts search
for cost-effective strategies to deliver
customized training.
