Teachers do their homework

As a former martial arts instructor, Chris Manning believes in

control. The Ensign Intermediate School history teacher describes

himself as a free spirit much of the time, but in the early weeks of

a new school year, he’ll keep smiling and joking to a minimum.

“When kids come in, if you present an attitude that’s calm and

businesslike, they’ll learn to respect you,” Manning told a classroom

full of new secondary school teachers during the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District’s orientation week. “If they see the teacher laughing

and giggling and telling jokes, they think, ‘Well, I can turn to my

friends and laugh and giggle and tell jokes.’”

A few blocks away at Newport Harbor High School, Karin

Nieto-Chaney had her room decked out as if she were preparing for a

child’s birthday party. The walls of her ninth-grade science

classroom were lined with construction paper and anything else

colorful; each desk had a chocolate wrapped in foil. Scattered around

the room were helium balloons containing classroom rules written on

slips of paper. This was the standard back-to-school setup for

Nieto-Chaney, who believes in teaching with a little panache.

“As infantile as some of these procedures may sound, o7usef7

them,” she told the incoming teachers shortly after they had left

Manning’s room.

Establish your authority. Act like your students’ friend. Be

stern, and don’t smile. Laugh, and pass out candy. All the lessons in

Newport-Mesa’s teacher orientation week added up to one overriding

rule: When it comes to leading a classroom, there is no one right

method.

“That’s where personality comes into play,” Manning admitted.

This fall, Newport-Mesa will have nearly 200 new teachers joining

the district -- some moving in from elsewhere in the state, some

never having taught a class before. To ease the transitions all

around, Newport-Mesa held its annual orientation this week for new

employees, leading them in workshops and busing them to schools

around the district.

Apart from serving as an introduction, the orientation week also

aimed to provide enough resources to make teachers feel secure in

their jobs. Friday, the new secondary instructors visited Ensign and

Newport Harbor and met with two teachers at each site; the elementary

group visited College Park Elementary and Davis Elementary.

Throughout the year, experienced teachers will continue to serve as

mentors to their younger colleagues.

“It’s a profession that has a high attrition rate, and the reason

is lack of support, not salaries,” said Christine Jurenka, staff

development coordinator for Newport-Mesa.

When the school year begins Sept. 6, a significant portion of

Newport-Mesa’s faculty will be new faces, although most of them have

at least some experience in the classroom. For Gary Robinson, a new

history instructor and basketball coach at Newport Harbor, teaching

is a family tradition: His father, Joe, has taught at the school

since 1969, and his sister, Sara, previously worked there as a

classroom assistant.

Robinson said that having a familiar name didn’t pose too much of

a problem last year, when he worked as a student teacher and coached

freshman basketball.

“The kids call me Mr. Robinson Jr. or the young Mr. Robinson,” he

explained. “My dad calls me the handsome Mr. Robinson.”

His own style of teaching, he said, was to be loose and

approachable.

“My philosophy is to be yourself and establish a rapport of

respect, and the kids will go with you,” he explained.

Paige Prescott, another incoming Newport Harbor teacher, had

logged one year of experience at Tustin High School while earning her

teaching credential at Cal State Fullerton. This year, she will be

leading an English class for members of Newport Harbor’s Da Vinci

science academy and another for college preparatory students.

Prescott, also a cheerleading advisor this year, said she was

looking forward to the challenge.

“Whenever I say I teach high school, I get this sort of look like,

‘God bless you,’” she said. “People think of young adults that age as

really unruly and chaotic, and they can be that way. But if you treat

them with respect, you’ll find they’re really amazing.”

Among the most experienced teachers in the orientation was Keisha

Lee, a 23-year education veteran who has taught at every level, from

preschool through college, in the Inland Empire. Lee will teach

eighth-grade algebra this year at TeWinkle Middle School, a campus

with a high percentage of English-learner students and one of the

lower-scoring sites on this year’s standardized tests.

“I’m used to working with kids who are at risk,” Lee said. “I’ve

taught hundreds of kids, thousands of kids, so this will be a cinch.”