The first year of teaching is notoriously tough. Denver is experimenting with a new approach [View all]

A teacher’s first year in the classroom is often a sink-or-swim experience.

That was true for Kyle Jordan. A history major in college, Jordan underwent six weeks of training through an alternative teacher licensure program in Texas before being handed the keys to his own classroom at an alternative high school in Houston.

Being in his early 20s made it easy for him to form strong bonds with his teenage students, but he struggled with lesson planning. He was instructed in how to break up fights but not how to get his students to refocus after the skirmish was over.

The help and mentoring he’d been promised when he was hired never materialized, he said.

“The other teachers had a running bet: ‘What month is he going to bail?’” Jordan said.

Read more: https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2018/07/03/the-first-year-of-teaching-is-notoriously-tough-denver-is-experimenting-with-a-new-approach/