Supporting, Mentoring and Retaining New STEM Secondary Educators Through Major Transitions from Recruitment to Highly Effective Teacher

The project aims to serve the nation by developing highly effective high-school STEM teachers to meet the national shortage of teachers in STEM fields. Teacher turnover remains a persistent problem and thirty percent of new teachers move or leave the profession after their first year. This proposal aims to increase the number of George Mason University and Virginia Community College System students who choose STEM secondary teaching careers.

It also aims to mentor them through their first year of teaching and support them to be highly effective in-service teachers to their 4th year and beyond. The project also responds to the changes in K-12 education resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the project also intends to prepare future teachers to excel in virtual, in-person, and hybrid instruction and to be highly effective teachers for students and at schools that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

This project at George Mason University includes partnerships with the Virginia Community College System, Prince Williams County schools, and Fairfax County schools. Project goals include supporting and mentoring 35 prospective teachers through their major education and career transitions as future STEM secondary teachers, including their induction into teaching and initial years of service.

Recruitment efforts will include working with Virginia Community College System to develop innovative programming in career development workshops, as well as leveraging a partnership with the University Career Services Industry Specialists for STEM and education sectors. A novel element of this project is that the College of Science Learning Assistant program will serve as a pool for recruitment of undergraduate STEM students into K-12 teaching.

The Learning Assistant Seminar enables these students to build a basic skillset in effective teaching by learning skills in the seminar and practicing them in the classroom. Recruited potential secondary teachers in STEM, majoring in biology, chemistry, and physics, will be financially supported with scholarships in their junior and senior years. Finally, a network called, TeacherTeams, will be formed and led by successful George Mason program alumni who are teaching in high-need schools and want to support upcoming teachers.

Subject areas of TeacherTeams will include Earth Science and Math/Physics/IT, Biology and Chemistry. This Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts.

It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.