New teacher hires prepare for upcoming school year

This week, the Troup County School System has been holding its yearly new teacher orientation at Thinc College and Career Academy.

The orientation prepares new teachers for the school year by giving them resources, curriculum updates and introducing them to the colleagues in the district that they’re going to be working with, along with administrative leaders and teacher leaders in the district who can help them once they’re in their schools, said Rebekah Ralph, TCSS Specialist for Teacher Effectiveness.

The multi-day training is only for newly hired teachers in the district, though some may be veterans from another school district or returning to Troup.

“They may be coming to us with 30 years of experience or they may be brand new teachers regardless, we want to make sure that they know the TCSS way and what it means to have a place for every kid,” Ralph said.

All grade levels participate in the program.

“We have everything from a pre-k teacher to a business teacher, to a CTAE health teacher. They’ve all been here this week and we’re trying to modify our sessions to make sure we are addressing everyone’s needs,” she said.

Ralph said the teachers will also be given time to complete tasks that they’re going to have to do in the first few days of school so that they can get accustomed to and accommodated to their school’s culture and their classrooms.

This is the third year that the Curriculum and Instruction Department has been holding the new teacher orientation.

About 80 new hires will participate in the program, which is less than in years past. Ralph said in the first year they did it they had about 150 new hires at new teacher orientation.

Ralph said last year they did a summer learning conference for the whole school district, so they had a lot more attendees, but there were around 120 new teachers.

“We’ve seen the number of new hires decreasing, which is always a good thing. We actually have a lot of rehires to our district that we’re excited about,” Ralph said. “We’ve had people go to work for other school districts and they’ve decided to come back.”

TCSS has about 12 rehires this year, she said.

Many of the new hires will replace teachers who have retired or moved into new positions within the district, Ralph said.

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