North Carolina NBCT Mentors

In an innovative new approach to supporting novice and underprepared math and science teachers, virtual communities will prove to be the vital lifeline to valuable resources not otherwise available to many teachers in high needs schools.

CTQ, through the support of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, has begun efforts to leverage the underutilized expertise of North Carolina’s 1,460 secondary math and science National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in order to: (a) prepare and mentor new secondary math and science teaching recruits;  (b) coach under-prepared and out-of-field secondary math and science teachers in several of the state’s high-need school districts; and (c) support the growth of new NBCTs in high-need secondary schools.

North Carolina’s secondary math and science teaching crisis is startling. Only 157 new math teachers graduated from the state’s schools of education last year.  The state has fewer than 4,000 high school math teachers, and almost 500 of these lack full credentials.  In some of the state’s lowest-performing schools, virtually all math and science teachers have fewer than three years teaching experience or are otherwise under-prepared.  In some of the state’s rural high schools, almost 90 percent of all math and science teachers enter the profession through a lateral-entry licensure program — which means they begin teaching without sufficient content knowledge and teaching skills and are subsequently unable to prepare students for 21st-century careers. Most of the state’s low-performing, rural schools have few experienced math and science teachers available to mentor new teachers in these subject areas. 
 
However, the nearly 1500 math and science NBCTs can be the key to addressing this crisis. While most NBCTs are not teaching in the state’s high-need schools, CTQ has developed both a structure and a process for virtually connecting teachers in order to spread their teaching expertise and cultivate their leadership. A recent statewide-survey of NBCTs indicates that these accomplished teachers have an intense interest in spreading their expertise to those teaching in environments where it is so desperately needed. CTQ’s virtual mentoring pilot will allow them the opportunity to do just that while also establishing a model that can be replicated in other parts of the country, such as California and Illinois which are both eagerly tracking the progress of these efforts for possible local adoption.