Question: Why is the induction of first year teachers so important?

Response:
The induction of first year teachers is extremely important because it sets teachers up to have a
successful career in the district. There are many statistics about how often teachers leave
education, and how after five years teachers are more likely to find a new career published
every year, and I do think that this has only gotten more extreme since the beginning of our
covid pandemic. A quote from the text says “Recruiting new teachers and administrators will not
solve the teacher and administrator supply problem if they continue to leave the profession in their current
numbers.” There are multiple reasons why teachers might choose to leave the profession, but
having a proper and effective induction process would greatly reduce the amount of beginning
teachers leaving the profession.

The induction process should begin as soon as the teacher is hired by the district, and should
continue on throughout their first few years. What I know about the Ohio beginning teacher
induction program is limited, but I can speak to North Carolina’s beginning teacher program
which lasted three years and worked in combination with their lateral entry program that
provided alternative licensure for those that had not received formal education training. During
this induction program, we had monthly meetings and were required to have a building mentor
that oversaw all of the beginning and lateral entry teachers. An interesting component of North
Carolina's program was that the beginning teacher program was 3 years, and the lateral entry
program was only two years. Lateral entry teachers were required to have a second meeting per
month, but they were also given extended time in passing the required certification exams.
There were a lot of problems with this induction process, and it might just have been how my
district carried it out, but in each year that I worked there, we had between 15 to 18 beginning
teachers that were all overseen by a single mentor. That isn't enough people, resources, or
guidance for beginning teachers. Many of those educators that went through the beginning
teacher program with me have left the district, or left teaching completely. I've become really
passionate about serving beginning teachers over the course of my limited career so far,
because of the disparities I've noted when I was going through a beginning teacher induction
program.

Having poor retention of beginning teachers creates problems within the district as well,
because they are continually having to hire new people, train new people, and revitalize the
district. For example in the school I previously worked at, we would have around 8 to 10 people
leave per school year, mostly those included in the beginning or lateral entry teaching induction
programs. It is hard to create any sort of consistent policy or programming within a building
when you have that high of turnover. This does not include how much the district was having to
spend and dedicate human resource energy into working against. If there had been a better
induction process to the district, I do not think that this many people would have left the school
or district each year.