NEWPORT BEACH : Teachers to Hone Classroom Skills

When school begins next month, Bill Knight will take over as Newport Grammar School’s new principal.

But his new job involves more than learning the names of 400 new kindergarten through sixth-grade pupils and forging relationships with new teachers.

As the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s new director of in-service training, Knight will be working with all the district’s teachers to improve their classroom skills and methods.

It’s a new position that district officials said will help both new and veteran teachers cope in the classroom.

“It’s important to both ends of the teaching spectrum,” district Supt. John W. Nicoll said. “It’s important to the people coming new into teaching for adjustment. At the other end, the teachers who are more experienced, but are suddenly faced with a changing student body, like English teachers who find themselves working with students for whom English is not the primary language.”

Nicoll said ethnic minorities make up 22% to 25% of the district’s student population, and students speak 30 different languages.

Knight’s primary responsibility will be coordinating the staff development programs run by various departments.

Once the programs are consolidated, Knight and the current staff of two resource teachers will devise a five-year plan for staff development.

Knight said he also plans to offer more programs such as peer coaching using cooperative learning techniques.

Last year, two math teachers offered to share ideas for math instruction with their colleagues. As many as 80 showed up on Mondays after school to learn, Knight said.

“When the opportunity is provided, they rise to the occasion,” said Knight, who had been principal for nine years at Kaiser Elementary School. “Experienced teachers want this because they are always looking for new ways to teach; every year the teaching profession is different. There’s room for everybody to grow.”

Conversely, those new to the profession often need staff training to ease into the classroom.

“New teachers coming into the profession, they’re really raw; they have limited exposure working in the classroom,” he said. “They come into the classroom and almost immediately, they have classroom management problems, and a high percentage bail out after two or three years. We want to make sure they stay, but also stay as quality teachers.”