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It's one thing to train and hire teachers.  It's another thing to "retain" them.  Many first year teachers are assigned to the toughest situations, plunged into the classroom.  The door shuts behind them, and there is no one on hand to help.  Many new teachers leave.  The turnover costs to school districts is high.  The costs in teacher morale are even higher.

I had a remarkable first year though I didn't know it at the time.  I stayed a teacher because of it.  It's led me to think, after all these years, that what happened to me by luck could be planned by design for others.

To keep new teachers on the job, let's give them what only luck is providing now.  Instead of sending new teachers to Siberia, let's send them to Florida.  Let's provide a satisfying first year that provides a cushion of success.  After that, these teachers will be able to face more difficult situations.  And, they will be more likely to stay on the job.

This is not a crazy idea – it's even do-able.  Administrators know well in advance about the better assignments, even in the toughest schools.  Now these are saved for those who have been teaching a long time.  But if we want to retain new teachers, like me, they need to experience success early on.

I was sent to teach senior English at a just-built school in Yonkers New York.  It was just over the border from New York City.  It could have been another world.  The 11^th grade was saved for the experienced teacher who knew how to get the students to pass the Regents Exam.  Schools didn't care very much about what happened after that.  Putting me into 12^th grade made sense.

Before me in all of my classes were more high achieving students that I have ever seen before in one place, then or since (over 50 years since). The students had all come from the new middle to upper class houses that had just been constructed near the new school.  They were "over achievers" before there was even a term for it.

Opening the school was done in such a rush that apparently there was no time to spread these high achieving kids around the city.  They all came together in my classes.  I didn't know all this at the time.  I remember this first year as the most exhilarating of my long teaching life.

First year teachers are  in many ways still like me.   It was a natural for me to become a teacher.  I really had been teaching for a long time.  I started out as junior counselor for a community organization and then became a summer camp full fledged counselor for several years.   Plus, and this may be significant, I was "bossy."  After all, teaching is about making change, moving people form one place to another.  Teacher do this in variety of ways.  In one form or another, teaching is about persuasion and management.

How did I teach?  I depended heavily on the textbooks.  I thought a lot about teaching.  Was I  supposed to care about learning?,  I stood in front of the class and lectured.  If there were any students in these classes who had trouble with this type of teaching, I never knew about it.

What I did bring was enthusiasm and it, more than anything, enabled these students to learn, despite my shortcomings as a teacher.  To this day, when I am asked about the most important characteristic teachers can have, I always say "Enthusiasm."  No wonder.  It's what saved the day for me and my students when I knew so very little about what I was doing.

I remember vividly my first set of report cards.  Here I was, a new teacher, probably expected to mark on some form of curve.  As I sifted all their papers before me, it was clear that there wasn't a C in the group.  These kids were close to all A's, with a smattering of B's.  I turned in my marks.  The next morning the principal called me aside.

"These marks are all very high," he began.  I invited the principal to sit on my classes.  The students were at that point studying (if one can believe this and it is hard to believe but true) the Stendahl classic, "The Red and the Black."  As the principal sat in the back of the class, the students demonstrated in their discussions that they understood this book and were enjoying it.  After class, the principal whispered: "I am surprised, he said, that you could give anyone in this class less than an A." 

I didn't know these kids.  I knew their heads, what they talked about in class and what they wrote on their essays.  I had no idea about their lives outside of school or even in other classes.  I thought only about the curriculum, the books, the assignments, the tests.

Reality hit in my second year of teaching.  I began to learn about what I didn't know.  I began to learn that just because I taught something didn't mean that it was learned.  I began to learn that I needed help and that it was OK not to know all the answers.  I actually had students who had trouble learning and I had trouble teaching.  That's when I had to start to transform myself into a teacher.  But, I couldn't have done it without the cushion of my success-filled first year.

I'm told by those wise in the ways of the schools that my idea for placing new teachers in "good" classes has about much chance as the idea that we should put our best teachers in the hardest-to-teach classrooms.  These nay-sayers may be right.  But something has to be done.  To be sure, we don't have high achieving, motivated students for every teacher to start with.  Yet, there are softer and harder situations every school.  Let's give new teachers softer situations.   Is this really such a radical idea?

We know that teachers are different just as students are; Yet a basic need unites us all – we all need a taste of success.  It's only from a solid base camp that we can move upwards on the mountain.

Published November 3, 2008