From Isolation to Conversation: Supporting New Teachers' Development

Provides a model to help new teachers adjust to challenges faced as they begin their classroom careers.

A new teacher's first year in the classroom is often filled with terrifying new challenges and great loneliness. From Isolation to Conversation uses an inquiry-oriented form of professional development known as the New Teacher Group to provide teachers with the opportunity to engage in discussions with their peers about problems they experience in their professional lives. Blending school psychology and teacher education, the book adapts a consultee-centered consultation model consisting of real teachers voicing real problems encountered in classrooms. The authors outline the process, step by step, so the model can be applied in many different kinds of school systems. The result is a problems-based discussion group that will play an integral part in supporting and guiding beginning teachers.