By Dan Nonte, University Relations
About 30 percent of the people who become teachers leave the profession within their first five years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Wachovia Foundation and UNCG are working together to keep more new teachers in the classroom. The foundation has pledged $719,810 over three years to establish a network of 150 veteran teachers in the Piedmont Triad to mentor novice and student teachers.
“Wachovia is committed to programs that help advance education by supporting the development of teachers,” said Bill Crawford, Wachovia's regional president for the Piedmont Triad. “A mentoring program like this that gives aspiring and new teachers the support they need to succeed is critical to strengthening our education system.”
This pledge to create the Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network has been made as part of The Students First Campaign, UNCG’s $78.2 million fund drive. The campaign officially began in July 2004 and through the end of January had raised $48.2 million.
Wachovia’s pledge boosts the company’s total giving to the campaign to $1.2 million, making Wachovia the first corporate donor to give more than $1 million. Wachovia previously gave UNCG $500,000, split evenly between the equipment fund for the new Science Building and graduate fellowships in the Bryan School of Business & Economics.
The Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network will be based at the UNCG School of Education. The school will work with as many as 16 school districts throughout the Triad region to recruit and train experienced teachers as mentors. The program will be evaluated annually for its impact on teacher retention, the quality of its professional development events and its effect on student achievement.
Research shows that high teacher turnover leads to serious problems – the quality of instruction suffers, schools experience continuous disruption, and the cost of recruiting new teachers strains already tight budgets.
Mentoring networks are one strategy to improve teacher retention. Experienced teachers provide professional development, coaching and support for student teachers and new teachers. Ideally, mentors work with new teachers in the same school and subject area as themselves.
As the State Board of Education Teacher Retention Task Force reported last year, “Beginning teachers must have an effective induction program which includes quality mentors and quality time for the beginning teachers and mentors to work together.”
School of Education Dean Dale Schunk, who served on this Task Force, says, “The Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network addresses one of our major priorities – assisting school systems with teacher retention. The simple fact is that if we could retain more teachers we would not need to recruit as many each year.”
The project also will provide professional development opportunities for the mentor teachers so that they, too, will have more motivation to remain in teaching. And it will increase the achievement of students in novice teachers’ classrooms.
After fully implementing the program over three years, the School of Education will turn the program over to the school districts. UNCG will continue to provide support, but the districts will take over primary funding and operational responsibilities.
Wachovia Corporation is a diversified financial services company that provides a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services. It is one of the largest providers of financial services in the United States, operating as Wachovia Bank in 15 states from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas.
It serves retail brokerage clients under the name Wachovia Securities nationwide as well as in five Latin American countries. It also serves investment banking clients in selected industries nationwide, and provides global services through 40 offices around the world.
The School of Education is known throughout North Carolina, the Southeast and the nation for the quality of its students, programs, faculty, and partnerships with the public and private sectors.
It offers 38 professional education programs at the undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, masters and doctoral levels for teachers, principals, and other school personnel. Some 400 students graduate from the school each year.
It is consistently listed among the top 50 schools of education nationally in the annual U.S. News & World Report survey, ranking 35th last year among the 484 schools surveyed.
The counseling program is ranked 6th nationally in the survey. The school’s early childhood special education program is cited as a model by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
