The Lincoln County and Brookhaven school districts are takingadvantage of a new statewide program to equip new, first-yearteachers with veterans’ knowledge.

As per state law, the county school district has implemented theMississippi Beginning Teachers Support Program, a teacher pairingservice that helps new teachers settle into their jobs by matchingthem up with an experienced instructor from the same field of studyor grade level.

District Director of Curriculum Richelle Ratcliff said theprogram – which is outlined in the 2008 Legislature’s Senate Bill2176 and became law on July 1 – is meant to help first-yearteachers overcome start-up difficulties and grow into veteransthemselves.

“We want to keep young, well-educated people – qualityprofessionals who can educate our students,” she said.

Under the program, teachers with less than one year of classroomexperience will be assigned a mentor teacher who has at least threeyears of classroom experience. The pair will be required to have 90contact hours per school year, such as attending professionaldevelopment meetings, teacher training and workshops and especiallyprivate meetings and classroom observations.

Ratcliff said first-year teachers and their mentors will sit inon each other’s classes at various times, and first-year teacherswill also observe the classes of other teachers.

Mentor teachers are compensated for their time by the state tothe tune of $1,000 per school year. The law states that mentors maynot have more than two first-year teachers under their wings.

Ratcliff said the program was designed to stop first-yearteachers from becoming overwhelmed by their duties and leaving theprofession – something the county has not had difficulty with, shesaid, but has been a problem statewide.

“There are a lot of reasons there, but a lot of times it’s justfrustration,” she said. “New teachers leave for various reasons,and sometimes it’s because they feel they don’t have the supportthat’s necessary.”

Ratcliff said the demands of teaching sometimes results infirst-year teachers abandoning education and putting their degreesto work in other fields. English teachers sometimes turn tojournalism, she said, while math and science teachers look into thebusiness field.

Sometimes, new teachers choose to stay in education but move toother states to start anew, Ratcliff said. She said part of theinspiration for the new pairing program was to retain new teachersin Mississippi.

“Other states are doing a lot of heavy recruiting, and onereason Mississippi is doing all this is to beef up our recruitingefforts,” Ratcliff said.

Ratcliff said the district has successfully used similar pairingprograms in the past on its own initiative, but no officialmentoring plan has ever been implemented. With a voluntary,compensated pairing plan now in place, Ratcliff said not onlyshould the retention rates for new teachers improve, but theteachers should also grow more quickly.

“A lot in teaching comes from experience, and the more theyexperience, the stronger they become in the classroom,” she said.”These mentor teachers will share things they’ve learned so abeginning teacher doesn’t have to learn it all on their own.”

The Brookhaven School District has also used mentoring in thepast, but the new program will improve mentoring efficiency bynarrowing the focus, said Curriculum Coordinator and FederalProgram Director Marsha Woodard.

Woodard said her office has employed a liaison to the district’sschools for mentoring new teachers for the past two years. But theliaison’s time was spread across the whole district and mentoredall new teachers – not just first-year teachers.

This year, all of the district’s 12 first-year teachers havebeen assigned willing mentors.

“This program will be more focused, and mentors will be able togive more of their time to first-year teachers,” Woodard said.