Strengthening and Sustaining Teachers Project (SST)
Building a Teacher-Learning Continuum
Pre-service teacher preparation, teacher induction during the first two years of teaching, and professional development opportunities that extend throughout a teacher's career must interlock to strengthen and sustain the quality of American teachers. ~ Pat Wasley, Chair, SST Coordinating Council
Strengthening and Sustaining Teachers (SST) was developed through a partnership among the University of Washington, Bank Street College of Education, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, the Institute for Educational Inquiry, and the Teacher Union Reform Network. It is a five-year initiative aimed at building a continuum of teacher development and support among higher education institutions preparing new teachers, the districts that hire their graduates, and the teachers' unions that negotiate contracts to ensure adequate teaching and learning conditions. School districts involved with the SST initiative were selected based on their commitment to building a teacher development continuum and the established productivity of the partnership among the district, a local teacher training institution, and the local teachers' union. As evidence, the partnership had to have successfully worked on at least one component of the continuum.
The partners, along with SST team members, collaborate on the redesign of teacher preparation, new teacher induction and ongoing professional development, with the aim of creating strong, connective tissue between and among the component parts. One of the guiding principles of SST is that teachers must have a voice in the discussions and decisions that directly affect their ability to teach. SST also focuses on the development of experienced teachers in order to effectively mentor newly hired teachers; just as new teachers need the support of their school systems, mentors must also have resources available for support. By assisting schools in finding innovative ways to welcome new teachers into a sound, supportive community and provide them with capable mentors and additional resources, SST strives to create schools that maintain a cohesive and highly-skilled faculty and a more stable learning environment for their students, leading to better teaching and greater student achievement.
The SST Initiative has been implemented in Portland, Maine and Seattle, Washington. In both SST sites, local and national SST researchers documented the activities and participants' responses and shared these as the projects were simultaneously developed, implemented, and improved upon. The SST Project developed a protocol to guide districts in building the continuum. In addition to Seattle and Portland, several districts were invited to build on the SST model through adopting this planning model. Five districts (Memphis, Tennessee; Denver, Colorado; Newark, New Jersey; the Addison Rutland Consortium in Vermont; and the Hawaii State District) were selected. These districts and their university and union partners, gathered in July 2005 at the Wingspread Conference Center to design their SST collaborative process.
See the following materials:
National SST Sites
1. Portland, Maine
The final project report from the Portland site is available.
2. Seattle, Washington
The final project report from the Seattle site is available.
Read Seattle's report on the STAR program and recommendations to develop a renewed induction program.
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