Decatur teachers applaud success of Mentors and Proteges Support program

DECATUR — Cassie Koehne is a maestro clergyman who remembers her initial year on a pursuit really clearly. It was reduction than 7 years ago.

“I’m a second-career teacher,” Koehne said.

But that’s good news for Koehne’s protege, Kimberly Malone, a first-year teacher. Many of a issues that come adult for Malone also came adult for Koehne — classroom management, how to learn sold concepts.

Decatur’s MAPS module — Mentors and Proteges Support — pairs a maestro clergyman with first- and second-year teachers, preferably in a same building, so a newbie has someone to go to with questions who can inspire and assistance them figure a whole thing out.

“We have a two-year module and any commencement clergyman is given a mentor,” pronounced Debbie Arbogast, teacher-mentor coordinator. “They’re there for support though they’re also there to give them strategies they can take behind to a classroom. Most companies, we have time to apprenticeship. (Teachers) are tyro teaching, and afterwards bang, they’re in a classroom.”

The mentors and proteges distinguished a finish of a propagandize year a small early on Tuesday with a cruise in Fairview Park, where a new teachers who have finished their second year of MAPS perceived certificates.

The Illinois State Board of Education issues a provisional, or initial certificate, to a uninformed graduate. That new clergyman has 5 years to benefit knowledge and finish a mandate toward a customary certificate, Arbogast said. The two-year mentoring module provides Decatur’s new teachers a leg adult toward fulfilling that requirement.

“Mentors offer support socially, emotionally and academically,” Arbogast said.

And often, a assistance goes both ways. Nick Kendall is a second-year clergyman during Franklin School and his coach is Jill Nicol. He teaches fifth grade; she teaches kindergarten. His students and hers are interconnected adult as “buddies,” that creates a kindergartners feel special when they get to hang out with a “big kids.”

“He helps me with technology,” Nicol said. “It’s a relationship. It goes both ways.”

“I was lifted in a digital age,” Kendall said. “It’s healthy to me.”

vwells@herald-review.com|421-7982