New Catholic school teachers need help of mentors, says NCEA speaker

Published: 2004-04-15

BOSTON (CNS) -- What new Catholic school teachers need is a dining room table, said a workshop presenter at the National Catholic Educational Association's 101st annual convention in Boston April 14. The presenter wasn't talking about refurnishing faculty rooms. Instead, she was using an image of how nuns and religious brothers, who once filled most of the teaching positions within Catholic schools, used to sit around the dining room table and bounce ideas off of one another about what worked and what didn't in the classroom. That kind of frequent feedback just doesn't happen on a regular basis in today's Catholic schools, said Theresa Kitchell, academic dean at Holyoke Catholic High School in Granby, Mass. That's why Kitchell developed a training program for new teachers that she's dubbed "the dining room table model." Such a program is crucial, she told a group of Catholic educators, not only to retain teachers on staff in the midst of a teacher shortage, but also because of the side benefit of "energizing veteran faculty members."

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