New teacher training starts

By Emily Richmond

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 11:36 a.m.

Despite having more than 1,400 new teachers on the job for the first day of school Monday, the Clark County School District still has openings to fill. Specialist positions include counseling, speech pathology and autism.

Elementary: 14 classroom positions/26 specialists

Middle school: 21 classroom positions/12 specialists

High school: 19 classroom positions/10 specialists

The district also had 262 substitute teachers working Monday.

With the launch of the school year Monday, the Clark County School District also kicked off a new program designed to train new teachers to work in at-risk schools.

Dean Petersen Elementary School, located in the 3000 block of Cambridge Street, was one of 12 new campuses to open Monday. It's also the district's second partnership school with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, providing a training ground for future teachers.

"It's critical not just that we have enough teachers, we also need teachers who are ready to work with the types of kids we get," said Superintendent Carlos Garcia, after touring the new campus Monday. "This is going to help prepare them for the real world, the world Clark County reflects."

The district has struggled to find the 1,600 additional teachers it needs each year, with 70 percent of new hires coming from outside Nevada. To reduce the costs of recruiting, the district is turning more to "grow your own" programs, where teachers are cultivated in-state.

Paradise Elementary School, on the UNLV campus, has been a professional development partnership school since 1999. Of the 125 teachers who have gone through the program, all but four have been hired in Clark County schools, said Daniel Bittman, director of licensed personnel for the district.

"By getting that experience hands-on, they're very skilled with the curriculum and understand the needs of the at-risk schools," Bittman said. "Because of the growth in our district, we realized we needed a lot more programs like Paradise."

At Paradise, between 15 and 20 students take part in the teacher training each year, said Maria Meyerson, professor at UNLV's School of Education.

"We've found that's a nice number. If you go too big you'll flood the school and that's too much for the regular teachers to handle," she said. "You don't want to dilute the effectiveness."

The program has given students a more realistic look at the profession, Meyerson said. Traditional teacher training programs call for students to spend a half day at a school, usually twice a week. At Paradise the students are there on a daily basis, often for the full school day, she said.

"The feedback we get from principals who take our interns (as employees) is that they're not like first year teachers," she said. They're more like second year teachers wPetersen Principal Mary Ann Ward said her school's professional development program will be modeled after the Paradise campus, starting on a smaller scale.

Two classes of UNLV undergraduate students will begin taking part in school activities in September and the first group of four student teachers are expected in January, Ward said.

The full-time teachers at Petersen include a few rookies, as well as veterans with 30-plus years experience at the head of the class, Ward said.

"When I was hiring I looked more for the interest in taking part in the professional learning community, and not just 'Where are you in your career,' " Ward said Monday. "It turned into a Catch-22. There were people who were interested in the model, but the neighborhood and the prospect of working at an at-risk school drove them away. The good news is we wound up with what's going to be outstanding staff."

Barbara Radecki, who has been teaching for 16 years, sought a position at Petersen because of the professional development component. Radecki, who is working toward her doctorate at UNLV, said she's seen new teachers from out of state struggle to cope with the challenges of life and work in Clark County.

"When you bring in people from other parts of the country, it's a culture shock," Radecki said. "Some don't handle it well at all. When you grow your own, you're getting people comfortable with the climate and the community. That gives them a head start."

The district also has partnership programs with other higher education institutions, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources.

Rice said she will be meeting Wednesday with officials from Nevada State College Henderson campus to discuss plans to offer classes designed to help teachers meet the new federal certification requirements. The No Child Left Behind Act gives teachers until the start of the 2005-06 school year to demonstrate they are "highly qualified," either by passing licensing exams or completing college courses, Rice said.

"The state college classes are going to be a major contribution for us to keep the teachers we already have," Rice said.

The district has also had success with its Alternative Route to Licensure program, where current employees in nonteaching fields receive tuition assistance and are then moved to classroom positions. Since launching the program last year, the district has hired five math teachers, 10 bilingual education teachers, 20 special education teachers and 24 English as a Second Language teachers, Bittman said.