Joining hands:
Network for Building Collaborative Cultures and practices
With rapid and significant teacher and AO retirees in the BC school system, and with many more new teachers starting their careers, the need for mentoring is evident. Yet there is little shared information about mentoring initiatives in the province. UBC's School Leadership Centre will address the issue of mentoring with a series of events and initiatives during the coming year.
Introduction
The next five years will see enormous demographic changes in the classrooms of British Columbia. As experienced teachers leave the profession, BC will likely lose a vast bank of teacher expertise
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Each year for the past five years approximately 1,500 teachers have retired. This past year the figure was 1,805. With about 35% of the teaching workforce between the ages of 50 and 59, and an average retirement age of 59, we can expect retirements to remain close to 2005 levels for at least the next 5 years. This means we can expect approximately 10,000 retirements over the next 5 years
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The universities and university-colleges in the province graduate approximately 1,800 to 2,000 graduates from teacher education programs per year. Ten thousand teachers with many years of experience will therefore be replaced by a new cohort of teachers. Together with recent retirements, this will change the demographics of the teacher population in BC
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Some districts have a younger overall teaching force than others. In Coquitlam, for example, 29% of the teaching workforce is 50 years or older, whereas in Nanaimo, this figure is 44%
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In 2005 there were 1,135 teachers (about 3.4% of all teachers) with 1 or less years of teaching experience, which means these teachers were likely new hires for that year
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For each of the three years prior to this year there were only about 600 new teachers hired, but in 2000 and 2001 the numbers were closer to current new hires about 1,200 per year
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There are approximately 6,400 teachers with 5 or fewer years teaching experience. This represents about 19% of the teacher workforce
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There are currently about 6,536 teachers on call. This number is about 900 more than recorded in the January 2006 snapshot
Considerable work is underway to cope with the transition of positional leadership (principals, vice-principals, superintendents). However, there is an urgent need to ensure that the accumulated knowledge and experience of teachers is captured and passed on to those entering the profession, and so that the potential of teacher leadership can also be recognized and developed. This might happen through a number of approaches, including teacher inquiry and mentoring. Some school districts, universities and the BCTF have already embarked upon initiatives to begin addressing this issue. The BCTF, for instance, currently supports teacher inquiry and mentoring in several school districts. UBC has developed a number of courses and projects with school districts to assist teachers in developing their research and leadership skills. The Coquitlam school district supports teacher inquiry as professional development through its “Learning Teams” approach. The Vancouver School Board has a 2 year Leadership Development Program which enrolls learners from all areas and departments. Burnaby School District has a program for Building Leadership Capacity: “A Foundation for Distributed Leadership”. We need to find ways to build on those initiatives develop others, form networks, and to disseminate knowledge and processes throughout BC.
A small group of interested individuals met at the School Leadership Centre at UBC on November 15th. That discussion led to a broadening of the concept to be “A Network for Building Collaborative Cultures and Practices”. It was agreed that a brief paper would be presented including the ideas generated at this first dialogue. A second meeting took place on Tuesday January 23rd, 2007 4pm – 7pm. Anyone interested in joining the Network should contact NCIE providing name, organization, email and phone contact.
Further reading
JOINING HANDS: Network for Building Collaborative Cultures and Practices
Presentations and notes from November 15, 2007 Dialogue
Discussion Paper
SLC Power Point presentation– Hartej Gill and John Moss
Mentoring Power Point presentation – Mike Lombardi
Teacher Statistics
What is mentoring?
Background to Teacher Supply and Demand in British Columbia - Colleen Hawkey
Chilliwack School District Mentoring Committee PowerPoint presentation
Links
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Joining Hands:
Network for Building Collaborative Cultures and Practices CONFERENCE
Further Reading
Links
January 23, 2007 meeting
View minutes and notes
April 17, 2007 Seminar on Mentoring Videos
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