Teachers Take Charge of Their Learning:
Transforming Professional Development for Student Success

III. HELPING TEACHERS TO ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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Teachers in the past have exercised little control over their professional lives. In today's effective schools, however, teachers make important decisions about their teaching and the life of the school as a whole. Teachers' responsibilities have grown beyond the isolated classroom walls to embrace the success of all children and adults who work in the school. Teachers are assuming a greater role in their own professional development and that of their colleagues. Enhancing student learning entails constant improvement in teaching and expanded roles for all teachers, including peer assistance and review.

Accountability

Teachers as Leaders

Leaders of Leaders

Every Teacher a Colleague

Recommendations

ACCOUNTABILITY

The school is the unit of focus for improving student achievement. When school staffs assess their needs and make group and individual decisions about what they need to study in order to provide a balanced curriculum, assess students, manage the school, or improve interpersonal skills, they will need to devise study plans for their own learning and evaluate the effectiveness of the plans in reaching specified student learning goals. Study and the results of study as measured by changed teaching practice and improved student achievement must be closely linked and reported to the public. A variety of professionally developed standards are now available, or will be shortly, to enable teachers to measure the effectiveness of their professional development:

Standards for high-quality professional development are available to guide school staffs in their decisions. Schools staffs engaging in learning should refer to standards developed by specialized associations such as the National Staff Development Council. Standards of professional practice that can be used as references include those for beginning teachers and those for advanced practice. The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards currently have such standards in place or under development. Measures of student achievement can be referred to after a suitable period of time has enabled implementation to result in changed practice and for changed practice to show student results. At least two years of focused professional development for teachers should elapse before student results can be expected to be measurable. Measures can include student subject standards or, in the case of goals concerning interpersonal relations, formal evaluations of reduced conflict, higher attendance rates, or other appropriate changes. Evaluations of interpersonal relations should be conducted independently. Parents and members of the community should be fully informed about student goals and, where appropriate, invited to assist in setting them at the start. Teachers should also help parents and the community understand appropriately chosen accountability measures. In a few cities, teachers have also devised peer assistance and review programs. All teachers should include peer assistance in their expanded jobs. Peer assistance and review enable trained teacher mentors to assist teachers who are not performing well to improve or be counseled to leave the profession.

Measures such as these are essential to guaranteeing high-quality instruction and improving student achievement.

TEACHERS AS LEADERS

Billie N. Hicklin, a seventh-grade teacher in the Parkway School of Boone, North Carolina, was one of the first teachers to participate in the pioneering National Board Certification (NBC) process. Developed by teachers and subject specialists, NBC is a rigorous examination of what a teacher knows and can do. As Hicklin relates, it is also an opportunity for the teacher to learn and grow:

The very best professional development experience I have had was completing the process for National Board Certification. Notice I said completing the process, not achieving it. I did achieve the honor of being in the first group of NBC teachers, and I was honored to be hosted at the White House by the President. However, the professional growth I experienced occurred months before I got the news about certification. With the goal of improving student learning paramount to everything else, the process of trying for NBC affected my teaching more than anything else ever has. The reflection that was called for throughout the process of videotaping my classroom in action, following selected students' writing progress over time, exploring the way my students respond during a literature discussion, and documenting my days throughout a three-week unit was reflection that, frankly, I had never done before in my career. This process provided me a structured avenue for doing that, and it is phenomenal the way it has changed the way learning takes place in my classroom. The NBC process is a rigorous one, and it is directed toward teachers' intellectual development as no other professional development ever has been. It fostered a deepening of subject-matter knowledge and a greater understanding of my students' needs as I read avidly to learn more about the nature of the adolescents we teach. . . .

. . . I teach now with my students more at the center of what I do. I spend time regularly reflecting on what I do and why and what I can do to make learning better and more real for my students. I collaborate more with my colleagues and my administration as I realize what a community of learners really is--we all have so much to learn from each other! I am more of a risk taker now, realizing that we won't improve if we wait for someone else to come in and tell us what works for kids. So I am now seeking new ways to teach concepts and blending those new ideas with ideas of my own that have proven successful. I am including all the technology we have available as tools for learning. I am sharing with my school and district administration as well as with my [students'] parents as I try new ways to help kids succeed, for there is no real motivator except for success [and student] achievement.

The national teaching certification process described by Hicklin is based in part on the profession's own standards for the highest level of teaching performance. Teachers who volunteer to measure their performance through NBC are being recognized by peers, districts, teachers' organizations, and states as leaders and models to be emulated.

Yet teachers are rarely given such opportunities to exercise leadership. Experienced teachers who could take on leadership roles continue to carry out the same job as novices. Indeed, many of the 268 teachers who have received NBC and the hundreds more who have voluntarily undertaken the lengthy and challenging national certification process to date are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Nationally certified teachers may be first among equals but as yet have few recognized positions from which to lead peers. For the millions for whom NBC is not yet available, years of work, learning, and development of expertise have left excellent veteran teachers much where they started: carrying out day-to-day work assignments that do not in any essentials differ from those they had at the start of their careers.

Finding incentives for all teachers to strive throughout their careers to attain deep knowledge and skills and to master their craft is an issue that many have struggled to resolve. Merit pay schemes that tie pay to performance have been spectacularly unsuccessful. Formal recognition of leadership in teaching remains an elusive goal. Leadership is a professional development issue because finding equitable ways of rewarding those who learn and are therefore prepared to lead can become a major incentive for all teachers to incorporate rigorous learning in their work.

A few leadership positions do exist for a small percentage of teachers, such as secondary school department chairs; elementary grade or grade group leaders; specialty positions leading honors programs or arranging class scheduling, athletic coaching, student club and extracurricular leadership; and temporary assignments for peer coaching, curriculum development and assessment, and so on. Most of these are compensated with small stipends and added to regular teaching assignments. A few are compensated primarily by reduced teaching assignments. The number and availability of such positions vary from place to place, but the primary faculty leadership positions providing time and opportunity to work with colleagues (department heads and grade leadership) are available to very few teachers. In secondary schools, once positions are attained, they usually remain in the same hands until the incumbent retires.

Teachers are convinced that valid and useful leadership should be rooted in the classroom and strongly linked to the needs of students in each school. This conviction is not merely a manifestation of teachers' adversarial relation to management; it is a positive understanding that leaders must be capable of addressing student and faculty growth and that therefore direct experience in cultivating this growth is essential.

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has proposed a "continuum" of development for teachers that provides a career-long set of quality assurances, from recruitment to college degrees and internships at the earliest stages to state licensing through extended clinical preparation and assessment, continuing professional development, national assessment, and advanced certification in successive stages (NCATE n.d.). At present, the national certification process, although it can take up to two years to complete, is the only available goal for teachers' growth between initial licensure and retirement. More incentives to study, gain expertise, and use that expertise are needed throughout the career. To provide continuing incentives and opportunities to rise to leadership challenges, most teachers should have opportunities to fulfill leadership roles. We need a host of leadership roles because we now expect every teacher to fulfill all teaching roles with equal expertise. In the words of Nobel physicist and education reformer Kenneth Wilson and coauthor Bennett Daviss (1994, 81), it is as if we expected one person to do all the tasks necessary to flying a jumbo jet, to be the "pilot, . . . design engineer, mechanic, navigator, chef, and cabin attendant" and, one might add, to do it in an aircraft cobbled together from pieces of a Conestoga wagon, a Model A Ford, and a Betamax video recorder.

Being a teacher means fulfilling multifaceted roles, and teachers themselves, parents, and the public expect teachers to fulfill all these roles well. But to do so, teachers also recognize the need to gain different kinds of deep and specialized learning at different periods of their careers, both in response to their individual promptings and in response to the needs of their schools.

Consider pedagogical and subject-matter knowledge. Secondary school teachers are more inclined to join specialized associations than teachers at the elementary level are (Abacus Associates 1995, 21). The NFIE survey and other studies show that at the high school level professional growth means staying current in one's field far more often than it does at the elementary level. Yet the intensifying move to higher subject-matter standards for students presupposes deep familiarity with the subjects among elementary and middle school teachers and a heightened ability among high school teachers to reach all students. The subjects for which high standards are being developed by specialized associations include English, mathematics, science, American and world history, geography, civics, foreign languages, the arts, and health and fitness. For each subject, rigorous standards are being proposed for the elementary and middle years as well as the high school years. Only the arts, health and fitness, and foreign languages are currently specialty teaching jobs in most schools and states at the elementary level. No individual elementary teacher should be expected to gain depth of understanding in all the core subjects, but each school staff should strive to assure a balance of available expertise in all these subjects among the faculty as a whole. Leadership in each subject, opportunities to gain depth of understanding, and opportunities to share that understanding with students and other faculty members are essential to accomplishing this objective. Some teaching specialties, such as art, music, and physical fitness, should remain in the hands of specialized teachers. Other specialities that pull students out of regular classrooms, such as reading, should be restored to classroom teachers who have deepened their study of the field. New, expanded roles in science, history, and other fields should be added as local schools review their faculty expertise.

At the high school level, departmental divisions of subjects result in a fragmented and sometimes incoherent daily experience of the curriculum by students. Schools experimenting with interdisciplinary approaches and project-based learning are attempting to overcome this lack of connectedness across subjects, where what happens in first-period science has no relation to second-period mathematics, or where fifth-period English is completely isolated from sixth-period history. Missing from the high school cafeteria of courses are opportunities for subject specialists to get together across each grade level, as they do in elementary schools, to devise coherent curricula. Department heads sometimes do this. Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, provides a full week each year for the different subject leaders within each school to work together, another week during which all the district's subject leaders work together by field, and two weeks of independent work for each leader to use at discretion (textbook inventory and "cleaning up" being major realities for most).

Grade or grade group leadership in secondary schools and subject-matter leadership in elementary schools are two extensions of existing leadership roles. Both should be present in all schools, and both should be available to more teachers. Such roles could become more available if they were perceived as positions for a specified number of years, renewable at the behest of the staff.

An abundance of leadership roles would provide more opportunities and incentives for teachers to prepare themselves for leadership by deepening their knowledge and ability. For example, sixth-grade teacher Marilyn Matosian, from Walnut Creek, California, writes:

In July of 1991, I left my comfortable life in the suburbs of Northern California to attend a three-week summer institute at UCLA. Never in my wildest dream did I realize the profound difference this would make not only on my professional life but on my personal life as well. I felt so privileged to be one of twenty-four teachers from throughout California to be selected to attend this Technology Academy. In the three weeks, I attended lectures and learned from UCLA professors and other practitioners. In addition to the lecture format, I experienced hands-on training from manufacturers of the latest technology for education as well as being exposed to research firms that were tracking technology in the classrooms. Another bonus to my participation in the program is the fact that I met twenty other dedicated, committed professionals, whom I continue to call to discuss educational issues. They are my network and daily inspiration. After attending the academy, I was tapped to be one of ten coaches (Teacher of Teachers) for the California Middle School Demonstration Program. While involved in my coaching duties, I have learned additional teaching strategies, especially for the diverse student population in California. The quarterly meetings of the middle school coaches, all fellows from the California History Project, enable us to collaborate and review current educational research and teaching practices and share ideas and experiences from these demonstration schools. This group of middle school teacher leaders has grown to twenty-one in the past two years. Finally, of course, in addition to this statewide involvement, I have my regular sixth-grade duties of teaching integrated history and literature. At my present school site, I am the leader of the sixth-grade core instruction helping seven other teachers to implement change and reflect on student learning and assessment using the excellent training that was made available through such programs. The key is to apply the new strategies on the front line and to improve student performance.

Teachers who have developed expertise, as Matosian did, are recognized by their colleagues and asked to provide leadership for the rest of the staff. NFIE recommends extending the number and variety of such leadership positions in order to assure the presence of all needed expertise on each staff and to encourage individuals to take responsibility for leading colleagues in their work in one or another of the needed areas. The long-range goals are for each teacher to study deeply in a succession of special areas throughout the career and for all teachers to add special depth to the schoolwide standard of high-performance teaching and learning.

This recommendation grows directly out of NFIE's experience in promoting teacher leadership nationally. The Christa McAuliffe Institute for Educational Pioneering was established when the January 1986 Challenger disaster prompted scores of donations to the NEA in McAuliffe's name. The institute sought to preserve her legacy of creativity, adventure, and promise by enabling teachers to take the lead in shaping education. Each of the more than 100 awardees over the years studied, networked with colleagues, and implemented changes in practice dedicated to raising student achievement, using technology, and addressing issues of diversity in the classroom. Evaluations repeatedly showed this program increased teachers' efficacy, professional stature, and leadership ability and consequently increased students' and colleagues' achievements (Carlson 1990a; Christa McAuliffe Institute Task Force 1992).

The larger question to be addressed is how the institute experience can be extended from a few teachers to all teachers. The answer lies in the need to assure that every school has knowledgeable leadership in a broad array of areas. In addition to grade and subject leadership, new assessment methods, in all their complexities, cannot be learned on the fly or from a workshop or two; they require deep, extended learning and practice. Introducing technology effectively into the schools will demand a variety of specialist roles, from advising on hardware and software appropriate to subjects and age levels, to searching out databases in each subject and Internet-based resources for the classroom, to monitoring and facilitating on-line discussion groups for students and teachers. Many of these roles should be conducted from inside each school, and they differ sufficiently to provide opportunities for teachers with different talents and interests to step forward to fulfill them.

Fully 84 percent of teachers responding to the NFIE survey agree that "[ensuring] that all schools have appropriate teacher specialists, such as technology coordinator or business and cultural community outreach coordinator[s]" is a priority. Teachers also believe that such expertise should be well rooted in the classroom and fulfilled by active full- or part-time teachers.

Teachers are telling us that love of teaching and working with young people are the prime motivations of their careers. They want leadership from their own ranks, and they want to be leaders without leaving those ranks. This is why we do not advocate a "career ladder" or permanency of tenure for any specialized role. Instead, we favor opportunities in each school for the staff to assess its needs for a broad array of possible special roles, to have a substantial voice in preparing to fulfill such roles, to volunteer to serve, to elect leaders, and to be able after a period of years to renew or change those leaders for another term.

Each school community, consisting of teachers' organizations and specialized professional associations and their partners, such as principals' associations, education researchers, and museum and university partners, should define a broad array of teacher leadership roles, from subject and grade or grade group leaders to technology coordinators and business and cultural liaisons. Having selected the appropriate leadership roles, teachers and their partners can devise professional development directed toward fulfilling them. School staffs should also have considerable authority on how they wish each leader to fulfill the tasks assigned so that they can invest each leader with the authority to carry out the work and commit the staff to cooperative efforts to carry out the leader's vision. Care needs to be taken in defining new roles for teachers in such a way that other teachers understand they cannot completely cede their responsibility for the special area of expertise to the teacher with the title; nor should teacher leaders merely replicate bureaucratic behavior in miniature. Such concerns will have to be addressed in delineating leadership roles and the responsibilities of both leaders and followers for incorporating leaders' new learning throughout each faculty.

Gerald Ott, the executive director of the New Iowa Schools Development Corporation, a school improvement and leadership development consortium, reminds us that "if teachers are going to enter this leadership realm, they need some of the same tools that traditional leaders have--that is, telephones, time to think, interaction with adults." More teachers need opportunities to cycle through leadership, from preparing to lead, through study, to leadership for a term or two, to cultivating their successors, and back to the next loop on the spiral to learn something new. They must have time to lead, and their colleagues must have time to follow.

The "spiral," rather than the "ladder," is NFIE's recommended metaphor for teachers' growth and development. Career ladders, as recommended by the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, implied by national certification, and tried out for a time through merit pay programs, are modeled on a metaphor of continuous, linear improvement throughout the career, leading to "master teacher" apotheosis. Some aspects of teaching may grow simultaneously and continuously through length of experience and accumulated learning. But the very large number of new demands on teachers means that midcareer teachers will choose to be novices from time to time, as many do at present in the face of technology, when their juniors might be better able to lead. New graduates will bring with them current information in the arts and sciences; experienced faculty might decide to take up a new language the better to communicate with an influx of recent immigrants to their school. Cycling leadership from hand to hand and spiraling upward through the career are important for keeping teachers' and students' enthusiasm high, for introducing new ideas, and for providing opportunities for all to excel.

Faculties should assess leaders for their effectiveness in bringing new or external learning resources to the school, for changes in teaching practice of both leaders and colleagues, and for student achievement in relevant curricular areas.

LEADERS AS LEADERS

Data Source: Greenberg Research, Inc.

Figure 3 Administrators and Classroom Teaching Experience

It may seem odd that a long discussion of teachers' roles as school leaders has left out the principal. Yet the term principal originally meant principal teacher, and the duties included providing instructional leadership for all staff. This is one area where harking back to the nineteenth century may be desirable. One of the reasons for the scarcity in teacher leadership roles is that when teachers do develop expertise, they are often promoted out of teaching to administrative positions. To become a leader has generally meant leaving the classroom for full-time principalships or curriculum, assessment, and supervisory roles in central district offices, rarely to return to teaching. The goal should be the opposite: to build incentives for growing and remaining in the classroom. When NFIE conducted its national survey, the teachers of America were quite clear on a major policy recommendation: 74 percent of teachers and 84 percent of teachers' organization leaders agreed that instructional leaders should "have periodic and regular classroom teaching experience." They further agreed (63 percent of teachers and 71 percent of teachers' organization leaders) that "all school administrators [should] return to the classroom at regular intervals" (Figure 3).

In a recent report, Anne C. Lewis writes, "Good principals clear out the debris in front of teachers, know what's ahead, help map out the march, get the resources, and monitor the progress. They don't bark orders" (1995, 41). Professional development to help principals learn how to do all this (and many other administrative, parent, and community duties) "apparently is an even lower district priority than quality teacher development" (43). The first order of business for teachers' professional growth is to ensure that the principal and all support staff are an integral part of both the decision making and the learning endorsed by the school. The principal should conceive of the job as dedicated to improving instruction. In the words of Gerry House, superintendent of the Memphis City Schools, "Conventional wisdom says that principals must be lead teachers. The fact is, teachers can take the lead. We need teachers to become leaders and principals to be leaders of leaders."

Appropriate professional development for principals is beyond the scope of this report, but it is essential to effective leadership of teachers. As teachers take on more responsibilities, they take on management and leadership characteristics. Complementary changes in the principal's role must take hold at the same time.

Wednesday Afternoons at Newport Heights Elementary School Bellevue, Washington It's 12:50 on a sunny April 1995 afternoon at Newport Heights Elementary School in Bellevue, Washington. But because it's Wednesday, the students board the school bus and head home or to day care arranged by their parents. The staff members still have work to do, however. For the next two hours, they will engage in well-prepared and productive staff development as an entire faculty. Among the group are several young and eager student teachers from the University of Washington, who engage in the afternoon's activities as full and equal partners. Also on hand is Dr. Jill Matthies, the determined, energetic principal of the school, who facilitates the weekly session. Dr. Matthies has been Newport's principal for nine years, and she has worked very hard to cultivate the climate of leadership and professionalism that pervades the school. "We have an incredible staff," says Dr. Matthies. "They are knowledgeable, reflective, and sharing. . . . All the adults in the building appreciate each other's strengths and hold a common vision for the students." Dr. Matthies sees her primary role as that of staff developer for her faculty. "Everything I do is tied to instruction and helping teachers. I'm a facilitator of learning for adults." She believes that staff members should "have a great deal to say about setting goals for the school" and that the professional development activities designed and undertaken by the staff form an integral part in helping to reach these goals. Like other schools in Bellevue, which is an NEA Learning Lab district, Newport Heights uses site-based management. This has been the case since 1986, when, led by the Bellevue Education Association (BEA), the district added a section to the contract calling for school-based decision making. This emphasis is designed to have teachers "take charge of change" by working with each other, parents, and administrators to improve student learning. Back in the Newport Heights library, the teachers break into small groups to continue their work of the past few months on portfolio assessment. Like their students, the teachers and the principal are also keeping portfolios. This, as one second- and third-grade teacher explained, "helps us to understand what students are experiencing when they select and review materials in their portfolios." Each group is directed by a team leader who is also a teacher. The teachers in the group share their work on student portfolios--successes as well as problems. They ask tough questions of one another about approaches and techniques and suggest ways to explain to parents how portfolio assessment provides an in-depth evaluation of student progress and achievement over time. Some teachers say that they invite parents to select materials for their children's portfolios. Others have encouraged students to include in their portfolios work they have completed entirely at home. They take notes about one another's work and consider strategies they have learned individually at outside workshops. Each brings something of value to the group, and each participates fully as a member of a learning community. After the small-group session, the faculty reassembles to critique a dissertation chapter by a doctoral candidate who has conducted research at the school. Discussing the chapter gives the teachers an added opportunity to reflect on their experiences and gauge their progress since the research was conducted. The author of the dissertation has been helping the staff with portfolio assessment. She is one of a number of "critical friends" of the school on whom the staff draws as an ongoing resource. The staff members became acquainted with other "critical friends" through the school's participation in the Puget Sound Education Consortium. Although the consortium is now defunct, the Newport Heights staff remains in contact with those formerly involved in the project. At 3:30 p.m. the session ends. Many staff members linger in the school library to continue discussions started during the meeting. The site-based mechanisms for decision making, including a Program Delivery Council and a School Improvement Team comprised of teachers, parents, and administrators, were instrumental in getting parents behind the Wednesday early release idea. These mechanisms give credibility to local decisions and help parents understand that teacher time used for purposes other than direct student instruction is time well spent. Also crucial to the success of Newport Heights has been the districtwide involvement of the BEA and its executive director, Michael Schoeppach. "When we changed the contract language in 1986 with regard to site councils," said Schoeppach, "it became apparent that we had to be involved in staff development around that initiative to address council needs. We worked with schools and Program Delivery Councils on consensus building, conflict management, and group dynamics." The ultimate rewards of this collaboration among teachers, their association, administrators, and parents far outweigh any difficulties encountered along the path to school improvement. "I think our school is fabulous," beamed one Newport Heights teacher. "We have gotten where we are because of Wednesday afternoons. You cannot be given new programs without time to talk with your colleagues about how to do them. Bottom line, the time we spend with each other means that things are better for the students."

 

EVERY TEACHER AS A COLLEAGUE

The storehouse of knowledge that 3 million public school teachers hold is the public schools' single greatest, least-tapped resource for improvement. Teachers who responded to NFIE's survey and discussion groups reported that such collegial opportunities to learn happened once in their careers, at best. Many could not identify such experiences at all.

The examples we have described have all involved group learning and decision making by teachers in a school, an atmosphere of trust and willingness to ask for help from colleagues, and regular interactions among staff to create and reaffirm their shared philosophy of children's development and approaches to encouraging student achievement. The kinds of multifaceted roles and leadership opportunities we recommend depend on such a positive, trusting, teacher-directed, team effort to learn from and with each other. Teacher leadership goes nowhere in a traditional school. Only adequate time, trust, and authority can enable colleagues to seek each other out, to learn together, and to act on their learning.

Although a principal and other district leaders can do much to foster such mutual trust through genuine devolution of power to each school staff, teachers' organizations are key partners in the creation of genuine collegiality. Michael Schoeppach, of the Bellevue (Washington) Education Association (BEA), took the lead in fashioning a contract that endorsed site-based decision making and the professional development that members needed to create the collegiality seen at Newport Heights Elementary. The teachers' organization, a helpful contract, a good principal, and involved parents all supported the central, collegial work of teachers.

The unit of change and action for higher achievement by students is the school. Teachers responding to open-ended NFIE survey questions repeatedly referred to the experiential, day-to-day work of teaching as, in and of itself, their primary source of professional growth. A majority of surveyed teachers (63 percent) see collegial assistance as an important, career-long part of the job. Some referred to team teaching. Mentoring of younger teachers was mentioned as often as being mentored. Discussions with teachers' organization leaders also brought responses that linked professional growth to collegial work embedded in the daily job.

E. Lea Schelke, NEA director from Michigan, where she is a high school language arts teacher, reported her most effective professional growth experience as the time when the "faculty of a seventh- and eighth-grade junior high school designed an open-space, cross-discipline curriculum for a sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade middle school. Parents, community, middle school students, and college professors were engaged in the two years of planning, two years of building the new school, and four years of successful implementation." Schelke thinks of this work as excellent professional development "because it was designed, facilitated, implemented, and assessed by teachers and administrators working cooperatively with the community and higher education. It inspired me to continue studying the power of teachers' involvement in curriculum design and . . . decision making for completion of my doctorate at Wayne State University. A continual change process is embedded in the experience. The program still operates." Schelke attributes the success of this effort to the daily work plus work conducted during six- to eight-week funded summer workshops, the joint higher education and school faculty focus on helping children learn, the inclusion of students' wishes for what they wanted in the new building, and the cross-disciplinary work with all colleagues from both levels and in all subjects.

Schelke defines professional growth, not as a single activity or set of activities such as the summer workshops, but as a long-term, collaborative experience where community, students, pre-K­12 staff, and professors are all partners. In a discussion group held early in the development of this report, Marsha Levine, director of the Professional Development Schools Project for NCATE, described this kind of professional growth as an ethos--a culture, a set of habits--not just discrete programs or activities. In looking for exemplary schools where the professional growth of teachers is a vital feature of success for students, and in asking teachers what had most helped them learn in their careers, such seamless integration of learning and working was highlighted. What teachers want out of professional growth is the ability to use their learning in school. Cheryl Lake, NEA director from Muskegon, Michigan, and currently an educational consultant for the Orchard View School District, described a one-week program on integrated thematic instruction as her best professional development experience, which she values because she participated in the program with her teaching partner. Together they developed a unit during the week-long session and subsequently implemented the new curriculum in a third-grade, team-taught, inclusion classroom. The two teachers "continued to refine and modify the yearlong unit . . . [over] the next six years. We developed our own curriculum, which meant we also needed to learn to do research as we developed the unit. It caused positive changes in our classroom and definitely changed our teaching to meet the learning capabilities of all students." The original one-week professional development program was a very important feature of this result, but the proof of the growth and transformation came over six years of collegial practice and continuing learning and revision.

Teacher Tom Morris, president of the Renton (Washington) Education Association, told us about "a three-year staff development project that was site-based." All primary teachers from the school participated in three days of joint learning, and all received follow-up observations and feedback. What made it valuable to Morris? "We participated together as a staff. It was ongoing. It was matched to what we needed in our school." And Sheridan Pearce, a teacher in Germany and an NEA director from the Federal Education Association, remembers a program because "teachers were helping teachers to improve. It opened the profession up."

Mary Hatwood Futrell, dean of education at George Washington University and former president of the NEA, summarizes the research literature that supports what classroom teachers such as Morris and Pearce know in their hearts: "Professional development is most satisfactory to the individuals involved when it is based on the needs of the professionals in the school and when it is delivered in the school" (Futrell et al. 1995, 23). In a five-year study, the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools found that student learning improves in schools where teachers work and learn together, and that such collaborative teaching and learning are linked to increases in student achievement (Newmann and Wehlage 1995).

At present, however, two-thirds of America's teachers feel they have little say in what they learn on the job (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement 1994). Such learning can be part and parcel of the daily work, such as teachers sitting down together to review student portfolios. Beverly Hoeltke and Carol White, Christa McAuliffe Institute participants and teachers at the Key School in Indianapolis, report the team "comes together" around the students' work. The "answers are in the relationships [with colleagues]" (Einbender and Wood 1995, 24). At Brushy Creek Elementary School, an NFIE-funded site in Taylors, South Carolina, groups of teachers sit down daily to share ideas, develop curriculum, and create portfolio assessment procedures. Through what they call "the Brushy Creek way," faculty members learn constantly by developing materials jointly with students, customizing instruction and assessment, and integrating technology into classroom work (Rockman 1995a). Isolated teachers know they run the twin risks of either getting stale or burning out with single-handed efforts to search out the answers.

The learning that teachers need from each other is learning that continues throughout the day, the school year, and the career. It is constant improvement of practice based on observation, feedback, reflection, evaluation, and concerted effort to try again with something new. Tried and true simply does not always work in teaching. Yesterday's signal success with one student or class can be today's signal failure. That students achieve differently on different days with different approaches and materials is both the bane and the glory of this profession, and finding out why and what to do next are most productively carried out in concert with other teachers who are serving the same students.

What teachers already know is that "one gains knowledge of practice by engaging in it. . . . It is in the creation of a knowledge of practice that teaching lays claim to the title profession. . . . the three keys to creating knowledge of practice [are] innovation, adaptation, and continuous improvement" (Kerchner, Koppich, and Weeres 1995, 9). Schools are the unit of interactive practice, and professional growth for the teachers in schools is a seamless part of that practice that occurs through their interactions.

To achieve knowledge-generating schools, teachers, administrators, public agencies, and parents need to relate to each other as they do in our exemplary schools in McKinney (Texas), Santa Fe (New Mexico), Bellevue (Washington), and a host of other places in rural, suburban, small-town, and big-city settings. Central Park East did it in New York City, and the O'Farrell Community School is doing it in San Diego. And with any luck, the reader knows of a school in his or her neighborhood that is doing it now. Such new relationships need new kinds of contracts that specify time for teachers' daily interactions and whole-school decision making, district policies that devolve the resources for learning to the schools, state and community policies that set the vision for learning and leave the work of realizing that vision in the capable hands of interactive practitioners, and professional action and responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning.

A SHARED VISION

The first order of business in such schools is to agree on a shared philosophy about child development and learning that creates the school's vision for student achievement. That philosophy, a researched, jointly developed, and agreed-upon statement, is the guide to all the work that follows. As designed by the ACT Academy, Sweeney Elementary, and Newport Heights communities, the philosophy is a working theory and a visibly present document that provides teachers, leaders, and parents with a benchmark for daily activities and long-range results. A school lacking a philosophy is rudderless, a collection of individuals pursuing independent goals and hoping that somehow it will all magically come together at the end.

The ability to develop a shared philosophy itself results from a learning process that is difficult because most teachers, parents, and administrators have never done such work. To prepare members to do it in Bellevue, the BEA was instrumental in researching, designing, and providing professional development for leadership, conflict management, and collaborative skills. Creating a working philosophy is necessary, but only a first step. The rest is continuous, job-embedded learning and improvement. Any school administrator who uses the past tense to claim "we restructured" has not even begun to try. As the teachers in our survey know, gerunds are the rest of the story: learning, improving, enhancing, enriching, changing, trying, working.

In-school learning for teachers should be viewed as the bedrock of learning for students. In Bellevue, an agreement to devolve such learning to the teachers resulted in changes for their local association. "Nowadays," says Michael Schoeppach, "when we run into performance difficulties with members, we spend more time drafting assistance plans and applying resources to help the individual. Instead of fighting, we put these resources into instructional improvement." And a district administrator agrees: "If it weren't for BEA, we probably couldn't have the kind of staff development that we have."

Joint resources and agreements among districts, teachers' organizations, and states are critical to creating collegiality. The teachers' organization behaves less defensively and focuses on the enhancement of teachers' quality at the building, local, and state levels. Where at present the professional development of teachers is generally a state mandate fulfilled by districts, the vision ought to be one of the professional development of teachers as the work of schools and quality review as the business of the profession.

Given the contracts and legislation to ensure due process, teachers' organizations can take on a range of new responsibilities for the quality of their members. Such responsibilities should include the establishment of standards for teachers' roles, such as NBC, and independent, statewide professional practice boards, such as currently exist in thirteen states, to set and review the certification process for all teaching certificates.

PEER ASSISTANCE AND REVIEW

Teachers' organizations can range even further toward the craft or guild model to include responsibility for evaluating teachers. This latter is a touchy subject for many teachers, who believe that assessing one another's performance needs to be completely separate from assisting one another's performance. But in Cincinnati, Toledo, and Columbus, Ohio, the NEA and the AFT have for several years carried out peer review programs. Although such programs have not yet gained widespread acceptance among NEA and AFT members, a crucial step toward professionalism must start with peer assistance and review.

In focused discussions, NEA state leaders have strongly recommended that the decision to explore peer assistance and review should be the prerogative of local affiliates, but that the state-level organization can help establish the legislation and advise on the contractual language that safeguards due process and fair employment practices while incorporating increased ability to evaluate and enhance members' quality. Collective bargaining, where it exists, and advocacy are major mechanisms for bringing about this recommendation.

In Columbus, Ohio, the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) Program takes on both the induction of new teachers and a concerted effort to mentor and counsel veteran teachers experiencing difficulties. Induction for new hires who are experienced teachers is often ignored, but not in Columbus. The induction program is required not just for novice teachers, but also for all new hires to the city's school system. The mentoring, coaching, workshops, orientation, and evaluation are all carried out by trained teacher consultants released from classrooms full time to conduct this work. In the intervention aspect of this work, teachers can ask for help or be referred by either an administrator or another teacher. Such referrals "must be approved by the principal, senior faculty representative, Association Building Council, and PAR Panel." The panel is a governing body consisting of four Columbus Education Association (CEA) representatives and three superintendent-appointed members. Teacher consultants then work with the referred teacher for an open-ended period of time (as long as it takes, provided the consultants report that progress is being made). Teacher consultants undergo an elaborate selection process and training to prepare them as positive and productive counselors and assistants. As of 1993, 144 teachers, (2 percent of the district's faculty) had undergone the intervention process over an eight-year period, of whom 79 percent successfully exited the program, 11 percent were counseled out of the profession, and 10 percent left the district before completing the program (CEA n.d.). The fact that teachers have taken on the hard but necessary task of advising colleagues who cannot improve to seek other employment should form the basis of a renewed trust between teachers' organizations and the public.

In Columbus, teacher appraisal, staff development, and school improvement are integrated, not disjointed, and the work of all three is directed by the teachers themselves. Teachers' professional growth plans and a four-year appraisal process for all are measured against NBPTS benchmarks. From start to finish, teachers in Columbus take charge of their professionalism. As one of the PAR teacher-consultants puts it, "I treat others like professionals, and I'm treated like one, and I like that." PAR is firmly in the teachers' contract. John Grossman, the local teachers' organization president, says, "We don't guarantee jobs; we guarantee due process. If they eliminate [PAR], they will have to replace it with 'just cause,' and nobody will ever get fired. We have to get to the place where teachers assume the role of instructional leaders." Judy Braithwaite, the local's staff consultant, comments, "What I do is help the Columbus Education Association promote teaching as a profession. I want to create opportunities for teachers to get out of their comfort zone. That promotes growth."

Teachers' organizations have entered into peer review through collective bargaining in order to increase the efficacy of all. By providing full-time teacher-consultant positions, districts support teachers assigned to address the issue of poor performance instead of just battling it. Almost all the time, this results in retaining teachers with enhanced abilities, to the benefit of everyone. Contentiousness and wasted energies and human resources are greatly reduced.

In Seattle, Washington, a similar program called STAR (Staff Training Assistance and Review Program) cultivates teacher-mentors to counsel and assist new teachers and teachers having difficulties. Roger Erskine, executive director of the Seattle Education Association (SEA), describes his approach as "trying to move from a school system to a system of schools." And SEA Executive Vice President Verleeta Wooten adds, "It's important that we take responsibility for improving the profession, that we don't let somebody do it for us."

STAR mentors are experienced teachers serving three-year terms. A rigorous selection process and training program enable this cadre to work effectively with peers. Whether or not review and evaluation are the goal, teachers do need professional development to enhance their abilities as productive coaches and mentors to colleagues. Specific opportunities to learn how to do this well should be made available to all teachers.

Both novice teachers and veterans who received mentoring from STAR teachers nearly universally reported that these interactions improved their teaching. All involved are enthusiastic, including principals, who at first saw the program as a diminution of their power but now welcome the new strengths the program brings to their schools. A teacher who has benefited from peer review offered this perspective:

I found it difficult to share my problems with colleagues, knowing that they were also busy, and from insecurity of confessing my shortcomings and doubts. I wished for a mentor teacher in my first year, but that was not available, and I struggled to do my best alone. It has been a great relief and a great help to me to have time with [the STAR mentor] to discuss my problems and to have her observations on my classes and my teaching. She has a great attitude, combining corrections with encouragement and support. I feel much stronger now than I did in December '93, as a person and as a teacher. I am looking forward to further improvements in '94­95 (Withycombe 1994, 22).

Teachers wary of peer assistance and review fear that it will diminish solidarity and trust. But programs such as those in Columbus and Seattle seem to increase trust by embracing the entire spectrum of professionalism, including the obligation to assist teachers who need help or counsel them to leave the profession. In all NFIE's interviews and observations, we were unable to find anyone in districts practicing peer review who expressed reservations about these programs.

Such professionalism absolutely depends on solid, written agreements that uphold due process. As a result, recommendations to terminate--and they have come from peer reviews--are perceived as fair by all. The ability to invest serious time and resources in the improvement process is critical. Such time is not a matter of a few casual visits or ticking off checklists; rather it involves a year or two of sustained work, feedback, and study. Mentors themselves gain from the transaction and become even better teachers. One STAR mentor says, "We definitely learn alongside the new teachers."

Peer assistance and review have not caught on in most places; but as schools develop collegial assistance as a norm for practice, it is possible that more local teachers' organizations will want to consider the positive effects of the process. An NEA teacher representative suggests that locals start by facilitating nonthreatening peer observations. "Let them see how good their colleagues are," she says.

Seeing how good colleagues are is the real goal. Learning to ask for and to give collegial help should be the norm in every school. In every school NFIE observed where collegial assistance and review are being tried, teachers were not just a little pleased; they were elated to discover each other's strengths and to benefit from them.

NFIE broadcast a call for teachers' best professional development experiences in NEA Today, a monthly newsmagazine distributed to all 2.2 million NEA members. Among those who wrote in response is Dr. Robert Maszak, a thirty-one-year veteran teacher at Bloom High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois:

There aren't many professional development experiences that made any difference to me in my thirty-first year of teaching high school English. Since I always thought I was a good teacher, most workshops, visitations, and evaluations were mostly a matter of spending a lot of time and getting little back in exchange. Then along came "collaborative consultation." Evaluation was always an experience that occurred every two years that was only minimally helpful to me in improving student learning and improving me as a teacher. The evaluation, although helpful if I chose specific targets to work on, never [resulted in] a long-term change or improvement. When I tried collaborative consultation as a realistic measure of evaluation, I finally found something that is useful. Collaborative consultation is an interactive process in which teachers or other observers with diverse expertise help an individual teacher to improve instruction. Improvement is garnered through either improving current teaching processes, suggesting new approaches, or helping in the discipline, behavior, or learning of students. As an example of the use of collaborative consultation, I invited two peer teachers into my classroom for two days, one hour each day. They were told to jot down notes about what I taught and how I taught it and to determine what I could possibly do to help the one nonparticipating student. After two days . . . of classroom visitation, one hour of consultation with the peers, and an hour of arriving at better teaching practices, my teaching definitely improved in so short a period of time. As an adjunct professor of education at Governors State University, I researched the current literature and wrote a graduate course syllabus for a three-hour graduate credit course entitled "Collaborative Consultation for the Classroom Teacher." I have taught this course twice, and it is not only the highest rated course I teach but the most useful to me and [to my] teacher-students. For once, a professional development experience is helpful.

INDUCTION FOR EVERYONE

Data Source: Greenberg Research, Inc.

Figure 4 Teachers' Induction Process at New School

A structured, sustained, school-based, teacher-to-teacher induction process for teachers newly entering schools is of vital importance to the continuity of program and sustainability of shared philosophy. When faculties have agreed-upon visions for students and common approaches to meeting student needs, both new teachers and veterans need to learn what these are, have an opportunity to enhance them, and sustained opportunities to become a part of them. This kind of induction is neglected in most schools, where "learning the ropes" is all there is to a school. In fact, in many districts, teacher assignments are made the day before school opens, and teachers and students in some districts continue to be shifted for weeks into the school year. Poor planning and a cookie-cutter mentality in districts see teachers as being able to plug in anywhere at a day's notice without any harm. In a number of larger cities, this disorganization is compounded by teachers who are on substitute lists for years and who are dropped into schools with no support for periods of a few weeks to years and then dropped into another when new emergency needs arise. Those same substitutes are usually also at the top of the list when permanent positions open up. They are then veterans indeed, with no history of collegiality and little hope of gaining it.

A system of induction and mentoring new teachers not only constitutes professional development for the beginners but also provides substantial professional development for the mentor teachers, who must articulate and reflect on their own practice in the course of guiding someone else. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) discusses induction for new teachers at length. Another area of induction is of equal importance to good schools: the orientation of transfers and other veteran teachers to a school new to them. It is interesting to note that the Columbus PAR Program requires all teachers new to the district, including experienced teachers, to become interns with assigned mentors. Ideally, the site for induction should be the individual school, and the responsibility should rest with each school's staff.

NFIE's survey asked teachers who had moved to a new school whether they had undergone a formal induction process. Only 17 percent reported yes, 30 percent reported yes to an informal process, and more then half (52 percent) received no help at all (Figure 4). Of those who received some form of induction, only 32 percent found it very helpful, 53 percent found it somewhat helpful, and 14 percent found it not very or not at all helpful. The kinds of help such teachers received centered on rules and procedures; "learn[ing] the ropes" dominated (44 percent), and getting to know building colleagues fell behind at 19 percent, followed closely by gaining general knowledge about the district (14 percent) (Figure 5). Not surprisingly, when the surveyors asked teachers to make recommendations for how professional development should be improved, fully 90 percent supported having school faculties design and be responsible for an induction program for all teachers new to the building.

Data Source: Greenberg Research, Inc.

Figure 5 Teachers' Views on How the Induction Process Was Helpful - Top Responses

Induction also means adjusting to accommodate new talents brought by the new teacher and consequently rebalancing the school's needs and program. When faculty members have a say in specifying the qualifications for a new colleague, they also have opportunities to enhance school strength. A new teacher will bring abilities that should result in program changes and occasionally in adjustments in the school's philosophy as well. New teachers need opportunities to help shape the philosophy and make it their own, not merely to have to adjust to "that's how we do things here." Such give-and-take and rebalancing of assets suggest that a good induction process will affect everyone in the building; therefore, it needs to be structured with care to accommodate the adjustments and to respect what new teachers bring.

A period of at least a year and perhaps longer should be devoted to induction. Teachers' organizations and the private sector should support the development of demonstration induction programs, study their effects over a period of years, analyze and disseminate successful models, and support their growth as part of school reform.

The highest turnover in staff has been found characteristic of the most troubled schools. States and districts must ensure that such schools receive adequate funding and leadership support to create collegiality and stability. Novice teachers should not be assigned to such schools without substantial mentoring. Indeed, veteran teachers and leaders who have proven highly effective elsewhere should be provided incentives to help shape those schools where teaching is most challenging.

Induction to leadership positions and to reform efforts carried out by small groups within a building are also issues that have received little formal attention. As leadership roles multiply and become more available for more teachers, care needs to be taken to assure smooth transitions when the incumbents' terms end. Schools should create apprenticeships to leadership roles so that staffs will assure that someone is prepping in the wings to take on leadership at the appropriate time. If a science leader, for example, were the "chair" for a three- or four-year term, a "vice-chair" might be a useful designation to ensure that someone is available and preparing to stand for the next election. Continuity and stability are the goals for such formal induction or apprenticeship roles.

As school staffs gain the power to design and carry out programs dedicated to the students they serve, they will also need to accommodate dissenting voices within their ranks and be flexible enough to adjust to new leaders without damaging the core of an ongoing program. They must keep the energy level and dedication high without fusing into rigidity or turning an innovative program into a new orthodoxy.

Many innovations of the past have faltered or failed as a result of leadership changes. NFIE recommends that teachers' organizations and the private sector support selected schools with track records of innovation to explore and develop leadership induction and transition models in order to demonstrate how to achieve a balance between stability and continuing innovation in our public schools.

Eleven Centuries of Experience At Sweeney Elementary School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the staff had begun a series of talks with the principal about how to improve the school, but he left to take another job. Despite all the remedial programs in the school, the students were not prospering; and despite all their hard work, the staff felt frustrated. The superintendent encouraged the staff to consider what they wanted in a new principal. In the course of one of their meetings, the staff realized they did not want a "principal"; they wanted a different kind of leadership. They began by analyzing what needed to be done. The list of tasks coalesced around six general functions: making sense of the K­6 curriculum, maintaining student records, handling expenditures and budgets and ordering and supervising supplies, organizing peer evaluations, looking after the physical plant, and taking responsibility for all legal and statutory obligations. Sweeney first-grade teacher Sandra Sanchez Purrington had taken all the course work preparatory to becoming a principal but lacked the certificate. The staff asked her to become their lead facilitator, taking on the legal responsibilities. Four other teachers were elected to take on the management team positions of physical plant, academics, executive secretary, and evaluation. They took their plan to the superintendent, who saw that the staff had done its homework. The plan met all state regulations. He told them if they could get state and parental approval, he would back them when it came time to get school board approval. The state saw no problems, and the parents knew the staff and trusted them. But one school board member said that he did not know how a bunch of teachers could know enough to run a school. Sanchez Purrington did a survey of the staff and went back to the school board. She told them the sixty-two staff represented a collective eleven centuries of experience in working with children. With that--and a boardroom packed by all the parents, the local NEA affiliate, and the backing of the other principals in the district--Sweeney's staff got the board's approval. The $7,000 differential between Sanchez Purrington's teacher's salary and a principal's salary was divided among the management team. The four team members worked additional hours for the stipends on top of their regular teaching schedules. Only Sanchez Purrington, as lead facilitator, was out of the classroom. All five were elected for two-year terms. Among them, they provided one and a half full-time-equivalent administrators. This management team met weekly along with two parents elected to join it. All parents were welcome at the school at any time and were in the classrooms constantly. The staff agreed on a philosophy and worked to make everything they did adhere to it. They had monthly professional development sessions. Sanchez Purrington's job was to act as a resource to the staff. She would search out new ideas and resources, but staff members would do the research and presentations. The parents were invited to all workshops, and there were special workshops on parents' issues that responded to parent surveys of needs. Faculty lunch periods became daily, upbeat professional development sessions. "Being in need of help was no longer dangerous," says Sanchez Purrington. She attributes this to the peer evaluation system. Every staff member had an evaluation team for the full year, including one grade-level colleague the teacher chose from whom he or she wanted to learn and who evaluated instructional appropriateness; one randomly chosen staff member who looked at how the teaching fit in with the overall program of the school; and the lead facilitator, who took responsibility for the state's requirement for evaluation. Each team member visited the teacher's class singly, and all members together would have a conference with the teacher. "These conferences were couched in a completely positive mode. Teachers found them not just productive but even exciting professional sessions. Everyone worked to produce even negative messages in positive ways," says Sanchez Purrington. When visitors came to the school, anyone on staff might be found making formal presentations. And anyone could and did present the school's philosophy passionately. Professional development had been woven into the fabric of the school because teachers ran the school, because teachers assisted each other formally, and because the formal assistance gave rise to collaborative work as a norm. Parents started mentoring each other and became activists on behalf of the school. Noticing a new construction site in the neighborhood, parents did some research and discovered there would be 200 new children coming soon. Their work helped the school to be ready for those children. Last year, parents helped assure a new wing for the school. Staff put up a "want ad" board where teachers would advertise their needs. A sixth-grade group of teachers wanted weather expertise for a unit on agriculture; a fifth-grade teacher answered the ad. Hierarchies and grade levels were superseded by expertise. The students flourished. When the first two years concluded, the parents went to the school board and were awarded an extension of the program for another term.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Help Teachers to Assume Responsibility for Their Own Professional Development

To enhance student learning in modern schools means to practice high standards for teaching, to assist one's colleagues, and to be assisted in reaching and maintaining those standards. Some ways of achieving this level of professionalism include the following:

1. School-based Professional Development

Professional development in schools should be based on an analysis of the needs of students in those schools and should be consistent with the district's mission and professional standards.

2. Standards and Accountability

Professional development goals and plans should be decided locally by the school community of teachers, administrators, and parents. Standards for student learning and standards for professional practice should guide the design, conduct, and evaluation of professional development, and these standards should recognize and measure teachers' expanded roles.

3. Balancing Individual Teachers' and School Needs for Learning

Individual teachers should design their professional development plans to fulfill their schools' needs for expertise. Schools should recognize teachers' individual as well as whole- faculty interests in pursuing professional development.

4. Peer Assistance and Review

Teachers should assume responsibility for their continued growth and effectiveness. Teachers and administrators should collaborate in each district to create peer assistance and review to nurture the practice of all teachers and to counsel out of teaching those who, after sustained assistance by their specially prepared peers, do not meet professional standards of practice.

5. Expanded Roles for Teachers

Teachers should study new instructional approaches, subject matter, and skills that enhance instruction, such as the use of information technologies, interpersonal and management skills, and skills for reaching out and including parents, business, and community resources in children's learning. Teachers who have gained such expertise should have multiple opportunities and time to fulfill expanded roles and to exercise leadership. Principals and other administrators should recognize, honor, and support teachers in these expanded roles.

6. Induction of Teachers

The induction of novices into teaching is dealt with in a report issued by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. In addition to the induction of novices, every school should organize a substantial, yearlong program through which its faculty will introduce new colleagues who are experienced teachers into the philosophy and operation of the particular school and help them refine their practice.