PART I.

Induction Program for First Year Teachers

Month: August

Topic: Three-Day Orientation

Rationale: To the start the school year, new teachers are often overwhelmed with information.
While their focus is likely their classroom and meeting their students, they must also be made
aware of district policies, procedures, and protocol. They should understand the importance of
Professional Development hours and documentation as well as the ramifications of not meeting
these standards. Lastly, its crucial for new teachers to understand that there are systems in place
to support them along their journey. Overall, the first three orientation days should begin with a
big-picture and end with a narrowed focus on their own classroom.

Who will be present: On days one and two, those present should be new teachers, central office
support staff, Central Office Administrative Team, and the administrator/s charged with heading
the New Teacher Orientation Program. Day three should include teacher union leadership

What are the Goals for this program?
To provide an overview of the districts physical and human resource structure
To support new teachers in meeting the state and local expectations for mentoring and
Professional Development
To provide support in helping our new teachers experience a successful start in their
respective positions

Description: Prior to the start of the school year, new teachers attend should attend a two-day
orientation. On day one, new teachers will meet with their point person for the district new
teacher orientation program, take a tour of the Central Office building and meet the Central
Office Administrator Team. They should take a tour of the central office, receive their employee
identification badges and obtain information on the districts Human Resource structure, policies
and procedures, and review the Employee Handbook.

On day two, the teachers should presented with district and state expectations regarding new
teacher expectations including: Professional Development requirements, documenting
Professional Development hours, teacher evaluations and development plans for probationary
teachers, and expectations for the mentor/mentee relationship. They should also be presented
with teacher association (union) information and literature.

Day three should focus more on the pragmatics of instructionally getting the year off to a great
start. The new teachers receive information about curriculum mapping, special education
programming, protocols and procedures, classroom management strategies, and preparing for the
first days and weeks of school.

Month: September

Topic: Understanding District Culture

Rationale: Studies have shown that without a culture of relational trust, respect, and empathy,
organizations suffer. It will be very important for new teachers to immediately be made aware of
and supported in understanding building/district cultural and behavioral norms. Covey training
provides consistency in these areas. Training of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also
benefits the individual teacher professionally (classroom management) and personally.

Who will be present: New teachers and their mentors

What are the goals for this program: The goals are to provide new teachers with a frame of
reference in building relationships and achieving their personal best. It will also serve as a
bonding opportunity for new teachers and their mentors.

Provide training in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teacher
Shine a light on the importance of relationships and positive culture
Serves as a bonding opportunity for new teacher and mentors

Description: Over the course of two days, new teachers and mentors will partake in Covey
Training. The district will provide a certified Covey trainer for the training. Day 1 of the training
should focus on habits 1-3 and achieving the private victory, while day 2 should cover habits
4-7, the public victory. The personal and professional benefits of this training are long lasting
and plentiful!

Month: October

Topic: Student Support Services

Rationale: It is imperative that new teachers understand Tiers of Intervention, 504
Accommodation Plans, and Individualized Educational Plans. New teachers need to become
familiar with the building support staff and the student support services offered. They also need
to be familiar with the needs of their current students and the area(s) of qualification or limitation
documented.

Who will be present: New teachers, mentors, principal, building support staff i.e., (school
psychologist, school social worker, school speech consultant, resource room teacher, teacher
consultant, school occupational therapist)

What are the goals for this program?
Understand the protocol for initializing a Building Educational Support Team Meeting.
Provide training in developing mutually agreed upon 504 and IEP goals.
Provide clarity to the RTI model and the shed light on the shared responsibility and
protocol for providing intervention.

Description: New teachers will be invited to attend the first BEST Meeting of the school year.
This invitation will provide a visual and auditory learning experience on the protocols of the
meeting, the documentation needed by the classroom teacher and the process for identifying
student needs. After the meeting, new teachers and their mentors will have a round table
discussion with the building support team and the principal to engage in open dialogue and ask
questions for clarity.

Month: November

Topic: Caring Community

Rationale: With the pedagogical landscape of education changing so rapidly and frequently,
staying abreast of best instructional practices and changes to curriculum and common core can
be overwhelming. In doing so, its easy to put aside teaching the skills essential to being an
empathetic, compassionate and caring member of the citizenry. It is important that new teachers
understand the importance balancing and integrating the teaching of caring community traits into
their daily routines and procedures as well as understand district wide implementation and
integration of these efforts.

Who will be present: New teachers, and members of the Creating Caring Community
Committee (administrators, counselors, social workers and psychologists)

What are the goals for this program?
To understand school-wide and district-wide efforts made to support the development of
a respectful, caring community
To understand school-wide and district-wide efforts made in our buildings to support a
safe climate
To understand student and employee initiated anti-bullying efforts in our buildings

Description: The Creating Caring Communities Committee is a district wide committee with
representation from all buildings at all levels. The Committee meets throughout the year to
develop and assess building wide initiatives to support building caring communities. Some of
these initiatives include programs such as Bucket Fillers, Conscious Discipline, JAMS
Leadership Groups, Covey Leadership training, Connect 100, and other Student Leadership
programs throughout the district. Every new teacher should attend a two-hour CCC meeting.
There they will receive a year long summary of the CCC plan. They will also receive
information regarding federal and district requirements for reporting bullying, harassment, and
discrimination at all levels.

Month: December/January

Topic: Introduction to the Framework for 21
st
Century Learning (Big Picture)

Rationale: Due to the rapid advancements in technology and the globalization of our workforce
we must adopt new instructional strategies to prepare our students to critically participate in an
evolving democratic society and to obtain careers in an unpredictable job market. Therefore, we
must create opportunities for our students to develop the soft skills necessary in order to function
as a productive citizens and valuable employees. The purpose of this segment of this Induction
Program will be to introduce various concepts related to the 21
st
Century Skills Framework and
relate how they are relevant to Coveys 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Coveys Leader
in Me Program.

Who will be present: New teachers, mentors, technology coaches, 21
st
Century Skills Teachers,
and Chris LeButt Huron Valley School Teacher and Author (Empowering Your Students for the
21st Century).

What are the goals for this program?
To provide an overview of 21
st
Century Framework (i.e., themes, skills, support systems,
and core subjects).
To introduce the relationship between 21
st
Century Skills and Coveys 7 Habits (Leader
In Me Program)
To describe the role of technology in providing engagement and enrichment
opportunities.
To demonstrate how Web 2.0 tools can be used integrate 21
st
century skills into the
classroom.
To give examples of project based learning
Introduction to multiple metrics and standards based grading

Description: This three session series is designed to provide a basic overview of the how the 21
st

Century pedagogy can be used as the unifying theme to integrate 21
st
Century Skills, project
based learning, Covey, and technology integration. By no means are these series of workshops
designed to develop proficiency; however, we intend to create an experience where teachers
develop a shared vocabulary and conceptual understanding of the necessity of integrating 21
st

century learning in a technology rich environment with varied student outputs (i.e. projects). As
denoted by the title, this workshop series is to provide a Big Picture or macro view to inspire
and create wonderings.

Day One:
Teachers will participate in an introductory professional development session that exposes
teachers to the core subjects (English, reading or language arts, world languages, arts,
mathematics, economics, science, geography, history, government and civics) and 21st Century
Themes (learning and innovation skills, information and media literacy, life and career skills).
The goal for this session is to create a foundational understanding of the 21st Century Skills and
develop an awareness of how these skills are woven into to Coveys Leader in Me program.
Chapters two and three in The Leader in Me will be required reading prior to Day One activities.
Additionally, teachers will explore the Why? behind the shift to the 21st Century Framework
by participating in a Flipped lesson by viewing a Ted Talk Video by Ken Robinson (How
Schools Kill Creativity). https://www.ted.com/playlists/24/re_imagining_school

Day Two:
District facilitators will introduce the importance of incorporating the 4Cs (i.e., collaboration,
communication, critical thinking, and creativity) of 21st Century Framework into the classroom
by providing a technology rich hands-on workshop that utilizes various Web 2.0 tools. Teachers
will be enrolled into Edmodo and allowed to explore various Web 2.O tools (i.e., Prezi,
PowToons, MindMister etc.). The facilitators will be modeling instruction to demonstrate how
Web 2.0 applications can be used to differentiate instruction in a general education classroom.
This classroom will utilize a make and take format.

Day Three:
District facilitators will introduce strategies to incorporate the use of Project Based Learning
(PBL) into the classroom using. Technology projects will be presented; however, it will be made
clear that PBL does not need to be technology centric. Rubric development and standards based
grading will be introduced and modeled for participants.

Month: February/March

Topic: Communication

Rationale: Communicating effectively is the cornerstone of education. Without effective
communication ideas, directions, and thoughts are lost or misunderstood. In education this can
have serious repercussions. Students may not understand material or assignments and teachers
may not understand that a gap in communication is forming. In order to be understood in the
manner in which we intend we must learn to communicate effectively.

Who will be present: Teacher leader trainer, Mentee, Mentor and any other interested staff
members.

What are the goals for this program?
To demonstrate awareness of the importance of communication in school.
To demonstrate knowledge of effective communication and listening strategies with
students and staff.
To examine techniques to aid in the communication with students.
To demonstrate the ability to question and direct student responses.

Description (February): Promoting Communication with Students
A trained teacher leader will facilitate training that aligns with Thomas Gordons Teacher
Effectiveness Training book. A series of short meetings will address the following twelve
categories, each of which tends to slow or completely stop existing communication that students
need to solve problems and continue in their learning.
Some typical responses that communicate unacceptance are:
1. Ordering, commanding, directing.
Example: "Stop whining and get back to work."
2. Warning, threatening.
Example: "You had better get your act together if you expect to pass my class."
3. Moralizing, preaching, giving "shoulds" and "oughts".
Example: "You should leave your personal problems out of the classroom."
4. Advising, offering solutions or suggestions.
Example: "I think you need to get a daily planner so you can organize your time better to get
your homework finished."
5. Teaching, lecturing, giving logical arguments.
Example: "You better remember you only have four days to complete that project."
These next responses tend to communicate inadequacies and faults:
6. Judging, criticizing, disagreeing, blaming.
Example: "You are such a lazy kid. You never do what you say you will."
7. Name-calling, stereotyping, labeling.
Example: "Act your age. You are not a kindergartner."
8. Interpreting, analyzing, diagnosing.
Example: "You are avoiding facing this assignment because you missed the directions due to
talking."
Other messages try to make the student feel better or deny there is a problem:
9. Praising, agreeing, giving positive evaluations.
Example: "You are a smart kid. You can figure out a way to finish this assignment."
10. Reassuring, sympathizing, consoling, supporting.
Example: "I know exactly how you are feeling. If you just begin, it won't seem so bad."
This response tends to try to solve the problem for the student:
11. Questioning, probing, interrogating, cross-examining.
"Why did you wait so long to ask for assistance? What was so hard about this worksheet?"
These messages tend to divert the student or avoid the student altogether:
12. Withdrawing, distracting, being sarcastic, humoring, diverting.
"Seems like you got up on the wrong side of the bed today."
Many people are unaware that they respond to students in one of these twelve ways. It is
important that we know alternative ways of responding. Many of the above responses have
hidden messages when the student hears them. They may hear you saying that they are to blame
or that they can't do anything right, when your intention for the message was quite different.

Description (March): Initiating and Directing Student Responses
As educators, we ask questions of students on a daily basis. As with any form of communication,
the way the question is phrased will affect the quality and type of answer we will receive. The
purpose of asking questions to gain information from others. These are called information
seeking questions. Other questions may provide information and direct the student to answer in a
certain way, or they may clarify or confirm information. The teacher leader will facilitate the
training and use role-playing to share techniques that will promote higher level thinking and
digging-deeper questioning strategies.
In order to effectively ask questions of students, the following suggestions are listed.
1. Pause effectively before and after asking a question
2. Pausing before you ask a question gives you time to phrase your question. Pausing after
you ask your question allows the student to think about their response.
3. Monitor questioning interactions
4. What types of questions do you ask? Do you ask closed questions when what you really
wanted was for the student to elaborate on his or her answer?
5. Meaningful questions
6. Monitor how many questions you ask, and the types of questions. Could you make
questioning more effective if you asked less questions, more questions, or different types
of questions?
7. Check for Understanding
8. It is important that we monitor students' understanding. To check if a student understands
what was communicated, ask the student to repeat directions, questions or summarize
what was said.
By becoming a more effective questioner, you are providing opportunities for students to more
openly respond and relay their thoughts. This promotes students to be more reflective and
provides situations for them to actively become involved in their learning. By learning more
about your style of questioning you will become more effective when asking questions.

Month: April/May

Topic: A Year In Review - Data Drilling and Triangulation
Rationale: As educators, its imperative to understand how to access and understand student
achievement data and use that data to drive their instruction.
Who will be present? Mentors, mentees, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction, representatives
from the Instructional Technology group.
Goals:
To support teachers in understanding navigation of Pearson Inform
To support teachers in understanding how to read and interpret student achievement data
To facilitate discussion on triangulation of data in understanding student achievement

Description: Data Drilling (April) - Teachers will have an opportunity to reflect on
assessments given over the year as well engage in meaningful dialogue regarding the usefulness
of this data in driving instruction. They will then be asked to access their classroom Pearson
Inform Data. A navigation overview will be given. Next, MAP and MEAP data will be reviewed
and discussed. Lastly, teachers will be asked to print and bring with them student achievement
data for the May meeting..

Triangulation of Data (May) - This meeting will focus on how we interpret data. Specifically
we will work on recognizing trends, anomalies (peaks and valleys), etc. and discuss the possible
reasons these occurred. Teachers will be asked to reflect on their noticings and make
commitments as to what they will do the same or different next year (given the current data).