Building Key Skills in a Teacher’s First 90 Days on the Job

In this important Kappan article, Newark charter-school leader and author Paul Bambrick-Santoyo says the first weeks and months of a new teacher’s career are a critical window of opportunity to accelerate classroom effectiveness. The mistake many principals make is pushing rookie teachers to master every element of teaching from Day One. A much better strategy is to focus on a small number of building-block skills in the first three months and then broaden the agenda. Here are some of Bambrick-Santoyo’s priorities for new teachers: 

• Covered in professional development meetings before the first day of school:

• Management routines and procedures 101: These are specified down to the smallest detail – exactly what is said and done – and the teacher plans how and when to roll out routines and procedures in the classroom.
• Rigorous lesson plans: These include data-based objectives and pre-planned questions that students will be asked.

• By September 30:

• Strong voice 101: When giving instructions, the teacher stands still, squares up, strikes a formal pose, uses formal tone and word choice, and uses as few words as possible.
• Checking for understanding: The teacher monitors student work conscientiously, noting student errors, and assigns and reviews brief end-of-class mini-assessments to see who has mastered the material and who hasn’t.

• By October 30:

• Individual student corrections: The teacher redirects students, choosing the right spot on a continuum from the least to the most invasive: proximity, eye contact, body language, saying the student’s name quickly, small consequence; the teacher anticipates student off-task behavior and rehearses what to do next; the teacher restates expectations while looking at students who are not complying.
• Data-driven instruction 101: The teacher analyzes why students answered incorrectly; plans dates and times to reteach what students didn’t understand; scripts desired student responses; annotates in lesson plans which questions to ask students based on the analysis and calls on those students.

• By February 15:

• Pacing 101: The teacher creates a brisk pace so students feel constantly engaged; uses brief 15- to 30-second turn-and-talks; allows no more than two or three seconds between student responses and instruction continuing. 
• Data-driven instruction 201: The teacher scripts what will happen when students don’t answer correctly; repeats wrong answers, giving time for the teacher and student to reflect; asks scaffolded questions that break the problem into smaller chunks; after correcting an error, asks the student who made the error to summarize the correct answer.

Crucial to mastering these developmental steps are frequent classroom observations by an administrator or lead teacher, feedback conversations, and role-playing to practice effective questions and moves. The principals in the nine schools that Bambrick-Santoyo manages push teachers to think through what happened in classroom interactions, sometimes viewing videos: Why was this student’s answer unsatisfactory? What was missing in the teacher’s questioning? What would have worked better? Let’s try it. This process, says Bambrick-Santoyo, “is an incredible boon to rookie teachers. It empowers them to get to the bottom of nagging worries about how effectively students are really learning, to master those practices that will lock in student success, and to do it all while honing their own instincts about what will make their teaching great.” 

“Rookie Teachers: The First 90 Days” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Phi Delta Kappan, November 2013 (Vol. 95, #3, p. 72-73), www.kappanmagazine.org; the author can be reached at pbambrick@uncommonschools.org. 

From the Marshall Memo #510