That mentor provides support and professional development opportunities to no more than three teachers in the school. Experienced mentor educators from the CPS Teachers Academy, CTU Quest Center, and UIC College of Education will provide training for all mentors. Year two for each teacher All new hires, in the second year of the two-year program, attend fifteen hours of workshops to support them in developing a professional portfolio consistent with Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. These workshops, with one exception, are offered by university specialists from throughout the Chicago area and will focus the new teacher on his or her own teaching and on exemplary teaching practice. On-site mentoring continues, but with a focus on developing professional portfolios that reflect the 11 Illinois Teaching Standards.
All mentors receive training in standards-based portfolio preparation.
At the end of the second year, each teacher will turn in a professional portfolio demonstrating proficient performance in each of the 11 Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. A cadre of trained university assessors from throughout the Chicago area will assess each portfolio and provide formative feedback to each teacher. This feedback will contribute to the improvement of practice as well as to the teacher's preparation for the Illinois portfolio assessments leading to the standard teaching license. If this proposal is approved and the program systemically implemented, CPS will be providing state and national leadership in addressing the quality of classroom teachers. In ten years, this proposed program would prepare over 10,000 CPS teachers for the new Illinois teaching certificate, and new teacher retention in Chicago would continue to improve.