Helping Young Educators Keep Their Balance
Remember how excited you were your first few weeks as an educator? How full of promise each student interaction seemed, how you could barely wait to get to your office or classroom or computer lab each morning?
That’s because there’s something implicitly hopeful about working in education. Knowing that the work you’re doing, the knowledge you’re passing along, helps give young minds the same opportunities you had—or maybe even opportunities you didn’t have—is a guiding principle of educators. And that passion, that commitment to students, is one of the reasons the field attracts so many bright, hardworking people. Education is about the rose-colored glasses. Education is about the future.
But unfortunately, all too often that bubble bursts. The New Teacher Center reports that beginning educators hit a “disillusionment phase” in their first three months on the job. Perhaps it’s that disillusionment that causes almost half of new teachers to leave the field after five years, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education.
And a recent study conducted by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) boils it down to dollars and cents: teacher attrition costs the U.S. over seven billion dollars per year.
At ISTE we want to foster strong young educators. Our students deserve the best support and opportunities and so do our beginning teachers. Professional educators bring a diverse set of talents to the learning process; the energy, creativity, and fresh ideas that young educators bring are critical components that keep this field vital and growing.
That’s why ISTE has created a new Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA). This annual award will be presented to a young educator (under age 35) who displays excellence in modeling innovative, NETS-aligned educational techniques. The award prize—a free trip to ISTE’s annual conference and a one-year professional membership—will help support a young educator at a critical juncture in his or her early career.
If you’re a seasoned educator, I challenge you to invest in developing a younger educator. Perhaps it’s someone in your own school or organization who could benefit from the accumulated wisdom of a trailblazer. Maybe it’s someone you’ve met at a conference who isn’t being nurtured by his or her own administration. Start by alerting them to (or nominating them for) the OYEA, and then keep in touch with them. Your informal mentorship might just be the crucial success factor for retaining this young educator.
And if you’re a young educator yourself, use this time to build your professional learning networks, take advantage of every development opportunity available, and consider applying for the OYEA. Not all of you can be this year’s ISTE Outstanding Young Educator…but all of you have the potential to be outstanding young educators.
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