These New Teach For America Courses Can Help Your Early Career Teachers

Over three decades ago, Teach for America was founded on the belief that all students deserve access to an excellent education. For too long, the reality has been that students’ race and class largely predicts their quality of education. There are many factors that contribute to this problem, including the fact that low-income schools are disproportionately impacted by teacher shortages. Teach for America is committed to training early career professionals to teach in low-income communities and investing in their capacity to become leaders and change agents in the education system. 

Aligned with creating supportive learning environments as a core value, BetterLesson proudly expanded its partnership with Teach for America (TFA) in the 2023-2024 school year. BetterLesson now supports 3,500 TFA educators through high-quality instructional coaching and evidence-based instructional resources to grow their skills as educators, and ultimately, to maximize their impact on student learning and success.

By supporting early-career teachers, this partnership demonstrates a clear commitment to providing every student with quality teachers and a nurturing learning environment.

The Imperative of Supporting Early Career Educators

Teaching is a rewarding and meaningful career, but it comes with inevitable challenges. Educators handle many responsibilities—lesson planning, delivering quality instruction, providing timely feedback—each with a profound impact, as the quality of education shapes students’ future opportunities. Knowing this, education leaders share the important responsibility of supporting early-career teachers’ success and growth.

While supporting early-career teachers has many positive outcomes, two of the most significant are teacher retention and student outcomes. 

Teacher Retention

Research shows that early-career teachers are the most likely to leave the profession. Yet, research also points to high-quality professional learning as a tangible and successful retention strategy. More specifically, there is a clear connection between instructional coaching and early-career teacher retention. Ultimately, when we invest in professional learning experiences for all educators, particularly those early in their careers, we are investing in a stable and enriching learning environment for students.

Student Success

Providing professional support to early-career educators also has remarkable impacts on student outcomes. Generally speaking, there is a large body of research that illustrates the role of professional development in student outcomes, with one study demonstrating how teachers who receive substantial PD can increase student achievement by 21 percentile points.

For early-career educators, ongoing professional development can have an impact on student performance that is comparable to the effect of having a teacher with ten years of experience. By providing new teachers with professional support, we directly improve student learning outcomes.

Courses for Early-Career Teachers

As part of the expanded partnership with Teach for America, BetterLesson has created 13 new professional learning courses designed to support the needs of early-career teachers. Here is a brief summary of these new courses, which can be used by all BetterLesson partners.

Classroom Management Courses: 

1. Preparing Routines and Procedures for the First Weeks of School: Those first few weeks of school are critical for establishing routines and procedures that create the conditions for a successful school year. With this course, teachers gain an understanding of classroom routines and procedures, the reasons to use them, and how to implement them. 
2. Establishing Routines and Procedures: Utilizing classroom routines and procedures is necessary throughout the entire school year. This course helps teachers develop an awareness of the significance routines and procedures have for learners and understand how to establish classroom systems that support achievement and cultivate a healthy and inclusive environment.  

Content-Specific Courses for Early-Career Teachers:

1. Student Centered Social Studies Planning and Instruction: This course offers strategies and tools for student-centered planning and instruction in social studies classrooms.
2. Student Centered Social Studies Classroom Culture: In this course, teachers learn about developing and promoting a student-centered culture in social studies classrooms.
3. Student Centered Social Studies Classroom Assessment: In this course, teachers learn about the importance and implementation of student-centered assessments in social studies classrooms.
4. Student Centered Science Classroom Planning and Instruction: This course provides strategies and tools for student-centered planning and instruction in science classrooms.
5. Student Centered Science Classroom Culture: In this course, teachers understand how to build a student-centered culture in science classrooms.
6. Student Centered Science Classroom Assessment: This course guides teachers around the importance and implementation of student-centered assessments in science classrooms.

Curriculum and Student Engagement Courses:

1. Strategies for Supporting Engagement for All Students: Student engagement is integral to student success. This course equips teachers with quality tools and resources to engage all learners through accessible and relevant instruction and learning tasks.
2. Using Classroom Values to Develop Culture: Classroom culture plays a significant role in student outcomes. Through this course, teachers learn how to leverage the power of values-based classroom culture to create the conditions for engagement and learning. 
3. Planning for Engagement: Student engagement comes as the result of intentional planning. In this course, teachers learn how to design lessons for student engagement and explore some important categories to integrate into learning such as collaboration, wellbeing, and discourse.
4. Using Backwards Design to Plan Effective Units: Lessons are most impactful when they are anchored by broader academic outcomes and goals. Through this course, teachers build awareness of how to use the principles of backward design to effectively plan a set of lessons that are aligned to a specific learning target or content standard. 
5. Communicating and Engaging with Families: When families are engaging in schools, student learning improves. This course identifies categories of family and caretaker engagement and communication, and reviews real life examples for new ideas for how to strengthen the bonds between school and home.  

BL Connect

These courses–along with over a hundred more–can all be accessed through BL Connect, a robust digital library for asynchronous professional learning experiences. These courses can be tailored to individual teacher needs and goals, and educators are able to move through these courses at their own pace, making the courses both relevant and accessible for teachers. 

From supporting students with disabilities to teaching self-management and social awareness skills, differentiated instruction strategies to blended learning classrooms, BL Connect has resources to support every educator.