Apprenticeships and Extensive Mentoring - What a Concept!

Do doctors and accountants operate on patients or prepare their taxes on the day after they receive their degrees?  Thankfully the answer is no.  Doctors must have internships and accountants must work under experienced accountants before they can sit for the CPA exam and yet teachers enter their classrooms alone on day one and are expected to be experts in all the intricacies of teaching students.  No wonder we lose so many gifted teachers in the first few years of their practice.  We put them in jobs with no support.  Thankfully some innovative programs are being developed to stem this tide.
 This afternoon I had the privilege of attending the JET (Journey into Education and Teaching) Award Ceremony at UMass Dartmouth where I was honored along with my friends Tony Mullen, 2009 National TOY and George Watson, MA TOY 2009 for our teaching leadership.  The real honor goes to the men and women in the JET and CUSP programs and the administrators that support them.  This group of outstanding educators has taken the step (as did I) of going from paraprofessionals to full time teachers. It was encouraging to sit with them and hear what they are doing in their placements. More encouraging is the way UMass has taken innovative steps to support these teachers.  Apprenticeships  and three year mentoring programs will help insure that they stay in the profession during their critical first years of teaching.  Kudos to UMass; other schools of higher ed could take their cue from you.