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Philadelphia’s First Year Middle Grades Teachers: Perspectives on Supports and Experiences — Executive Summary

The School District of Philadelphia implemented several ambitious new initiatives in 2003-04 aimed at inducting and retaining new teachers. These efforts supplemented the existing in-school mentoring program and included the assignment of a New Teacher Coach to each new teacher, a summer orientation program, and a year-long after-school induction program. This is an executive summary to the report, which, based on interviews at the end of the 2003-04 school year with 20 new teachers in 16 middle and K-8 schools, examines new teachers’ assessments of these supports and summarizes their dominant impressions as first-year teachers in Philadelphia.