With the spring hiring frenzy in your rearview mirror, it’s time to start thinking about introductions and orientations for your newest employees! New teachers should feel welcome not just in faculty lounges, but in the larger school community, too.
Welcome to the Team!
As School Head, ensure your private-independent school’s induction process is yearlong. Of course, you can begin with a new teachers’ orientation—a meeting, team-building exercises, or other “traditional” integration event—but induction goes further than this initial event.
Such an extended induction process for new hires helps teach your school’s mission, educational philosophy, and overall professional culture to all new teachers. They can be guided by “mentors,” senior teachers who understand the challenges faced in classrooms and can provide practical examples of “living out” professional goals and dreams.
For example, your school might be working to integrate more technology into the classroom. A mentoring history teacher could demonstrate how he/she has done this in his/her classroom, showing how government classes followed political campaigns via Twitter hashtags and watched full debates on YouTube to discuss the importance of context when viewing 30-second sound bytes on newscasts.
Remember, induction does not end with orientation or the assignment of a mentor teacher. As School Head, keeping open lines of communication with all your staff and faculty is vital, but it’s especially important for new teachers. Make time for periodic, informal check-ins to see how new teachers are holding up and communicate frequently with your Division Head about transitions.
So that’s as far as you could help in the school itself, but how can you help new teachers introduce themselves to students and parents?
Welcome to the Community!
Why not make a video to introduce the new teachers to your full community? Posted to YouTube and other social media sites, you can give incoming teachers a chance to share their thoughts and philosophies with families, making the first day of classes less scary for everyone involved. Check out this video by Highland Park in which teachers and staff talk about Highland’s orientation program to family and friends.
If you’d rather try something a little bit less time-intensive, publish bios of new teachers—including pictures!—in the community newsletter. Maybe you could have these blurbs featured on a special “new teacher” page of your website, like Grace School did for its primary, lower, middle, and specialty teachers.
And, if your community is especially welcoming and generous, you could organize some sort of small class gift for the new teacher from the incoming students, to be presented on the first day of school. Mrs. Gibson must’ve had a lovely first day of school, after students and parents put together their ideas for a welcome gift for this teacher on a shared Pinterest board.
So take some time this month to brainstorm how you can make your newest hires feel welcomed and ready to meet their educational challenges this fall!
Additional ISM resources:
Private School News Vol. 13 No. 2 Why Teachers Quit
ISM Monthly Update for Human Resources Vol. 9 No. 9 Are You a Reluctant (or Unwilling) Mentor?
ISM Monthly Update for School Heads Vol. 12 No. 2 Conversation as Evaluation
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
Research: New Teacher Induction Programs
I&P Vol. 37 No. 13 Teacher Induction That Supports and Inspires
I&P Vol. No. 35 No. 16 New Faculty and Your School's Purpose and Outcome Statements
