The Ripple Effect of Supporting New Teachers

One teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Anita Johnson, who taught English at Dallas ISD’s J.L. Long Middle School in the 1980s. Ms. Johnson was my supervising teacher when I completed a semester of student teaching in 1986.  Ms. Johnson taught me how to structure a lesson, plan for contingencies, and use an overhead projector. More than that, she taught me the gentle balance that is classroom management—the importance of being kind, fair, and firm. [Read more…]

At that time, there was no stipend for supervising student teachers, and Ms. Johnson confided her frustration that she received no compensation or release time for her supervisory work.  She was an excellent teacher and because of her excellence, she was assigned to supervise a new student-teacher nearly every year. I hope that my gratitude for her help and the knowledge that through her ongoing support of new teachers, she has touched the lives of students she has never met—the many students taught by the young teachers whose lives and careers she helped to shape—is some compensation for her effort.