#StayinTeaching: Pathways to Writing Project Leadership for Early-Career Teachers

In the United States, 30-40% of teachers leave the profession during their first five years. This includes the exit of promising teachers, many who have been identified as exemplary, but who have come to feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or under-appreciated. Research suggests that excellent teachers who stay in the profession had experiences during their novice years that contributed to their retention. These include: mentoring and collaboration, belonging to professional communities, self-initiated growth plans, and connections with external networks of teachers. These reasons for staying in the profession align well with the experiences of participation in Writing Project activities. We are vexed by concerns about lost potential when promising teachers make an early exit from the career, and we feel certain that being involved with meaningful professional learning experiences, such as those provided by Writing Project sites, could curtail this exit. A combination of online surveys, face-to-face focus groups, and summer retreats helped us identify what our Writing Project site has provided that has been helpful and also helped us find our blind spots – those things that have kept novice teachers from participating. This book describes our plan for cultivating young teacher-leaders and the journey we took to develop that plan. Included is an in-depth process for root-cause analysis that we used to uncover why early-career teachers were leaving the profession. (The process, however, could be used to discover real causes for other problems, leading to impactful solutions). By sharing our process and outcomes, we hope to support others in their desires to involve promising young teachers in ways that will curb their exit from the profession. Because the path to leadership that we’ve developed for early-career teachers involves incremental steps rather than commitment to a month-long institute, Writing Project Sites might also find our ideas helpful as they consider alternative pathways to leadership for the various teacher-groups they serve. Descriptions of online and face-to-face professional learning events for teachers are provided.