New Teacher Orientation...

I interviewed a music teacher that was new to the county. She was not a first year teacher, but new to the county. For her first day of orientation she participated in a huge meeting with all the new teachers in an auditorium. She was spoken to by officials from the county, and listened to many inspirational speeches and information about MPCS. She stated that although she knows this type of meeting is necessary, she doesn't really remember much from this meeting.

However, she felt that the rest of the orientation week was extremely useful. She said that she met with all the new music teachers (only 4 of them) everyday, along with the music supervisor. This was a very small group of teachers, and allowed her to become acclimated with how she should approach her subject within our county, and more specifically, within her school. The music supervisor met them everyday and gave them applicable information and allowed the new teachers to ask lot of questions. In addition, she also gave them time to reflect on their particular schools, guiding them as to how to approach the program within the school they will be teaching at. The teacher I interviewed found this to be very helpful in making her transition into teaching in MPCS successful.

In addition, she was assigned a mentor within her department in her school.