Alabama Gov. to Attend Roundtable Discussion with Teachers

Governor Bob Riley will join eight teachers from schools in Jefferson, Montgomery and Elmore counties for a roundtable discussion on Monday, September 8.  They will be discussing the first year of the state’s new teacher mentoring program.

The teachers will tell the Governor and State School Superintendent Joe Morton their experiences as part of the first-ever effort to provide new teachers across the state with a trained mentor.  The idea came out of the Governor’s Commission on Quality Teaching in late 2006.  Governor Riley requested funding to implement the Alabama Teacher Mentoring Program and the Legislature passed a Fiscal Year 2008 education budget that included almost $4 million for the program.  More than 2,900 beginning teachers were mentored during the program’s first year.  Under the program, each beginning teacher in the state receives a trained mentor for their first year in the classroom.

Now that the first year of the mentoring program has been completed, Governor Riley and Dr. Morton will listen as teachers who were mentored and those who served as mentors tell their stories about how the program worked.  There will also be a review of results of the program.

When the teacher mentoring program was launched, Governor Riley said its aim was to improve the quality of instruction and increase teacher retention, both of which would lead to improved student achievement.  Studies show that 30-50 percent of all new teachers leave the profession within the first five years.