In education lingo, a BT = beginning teacher – and they need a lot of help and encouragement that ABSS is trying to provide
The Alamance-Burlington school system has launched a “Beginning Teacher Classroom Closet” to provide new teachers with supplies to set up their classrooms and support to help them navigate their profession.
The ABSS Beginning Teacher Closet is designated for teachers who are within their first three years of teaching and is located at the Sellars-Gunn Education Center at 612 Apple Street, Burlington.
[Story continues below link to sidebar story.]
Most new teachers don’t start out wanting to teach: https://alamancenews.com/most-new-abss-teachers-dont-start-out-wanting-to-teach/
All of the supplies have been donated by local businesses and nonprofits such as LabCorp, Impact Alamance, and the Alamance Community Foundation; retired ABSS educators; and other donors, the school system’s public information officer Emily-Lynn Adkins explained in a recent interview with The Alamance News.
[Story continues below photo.]
ABSS has two beginning teacher (“BT”) coordinators – Bambie Evans and Sarah Jones – both veteran teachers who oversee the BT Classroom Closet, as well as a “BT Base Camp,” helping a total of 250 ABSS teachers navigate a three-year “induction” period that is mandated for new teachers by the State Board of Education.
Though there have been previous iterations of the school supply room, a newly-expanded space at Sellars-Gunn represents a significant enlargement of what the two BT coordinators, Evans and Jones, describe as a community-wide effort to support new ABSS teachers.
“It continues to get bigger and bigger,” Evans told the newspaper. At one point, so many donations came in, she and her counterpart, Jones, had to store the supplies in a “staging area” until everything could be organized.
Evans and Jones outlined in a recent interview with The Alamance News some of the ways that ABSS works to support beginning teachers (“BTs”), as well as some of the challenges that new teachers face during their first three years on the job.
[Story continues below photo.]
All BTs are assigned a mentor to guide them during their three-year induction period. “You are really scratching the surface [of the profession] that first year,” Evans explained. “That second year, you learn how to do lesson plans, work with people…That’s a lot of stuff to learn.”
“We have [professional development] here, as well as in the classroom throughout the school year,” Jones elaborated. Ongoing training and support from teaching mentors helps to counter some of the turnover that state and local education officials say is common during the first three years of teaching.
ABSS currently has approximately 200 experienced teachers who serve as mentors for the 250 beginning teachers, Evans and Jones told the newspaper.
As part of the classroom closet at Sellars-Gunn, the two BT coordinators have launched what they currently call the “BT Base Camp,” where new teachers can collaborate with one another; collect supplies for setting up their classrooms; and create instructional materials to enhance their lessons.
The pair set up the BT Classroom Closet with donated supplies and equipment in less than two months, Jones recalled in the interview.
“That’s zero dollars [that ABSS or the new teachers had to spend],” Evans pointed out. The BT Classroom Closet is stocked with almost everything that new teachers will need to set up their classrooms. That includes clothespins – “things you wouldn’t think about that they need,” she said – to hang posters and other visual instructional materials.
The BT Base Camp is equipped with a Cricut-brand design and cutting machine where BTs can make posters and “anchor charts” that reinforce concepts that build on one another (such as multiplication tables or vocabulary words); a separate meeting space with oversized chairs where BTs can collaborate with their peers; a supply room decked out wall-to-wall with school supplies; and dozens of new books for teachers to set up mini-libraries in their classrooms.
As of Monday, June 30, ABSS had hired a total of 49 new BTs – or what school officials term “BT 1s” – in preparation for the 2025-26 school year, school officials told the newspaper.
There were 105 vacant teaching positions as of Wednesday, July 2, according to officials in the ABSS human resources department, who emphasized that the number of vacancies “is changing by the hour” due to the usual summertime fluctuations in hiring, as well as resignations and retirements among existing teachers.
The largest proportion of teaching vacancies across all grade spans (elementary, middle, and high school) was among Exceptional Children’s teachers, with 27 openings for EC teachers as of July 3, according to the ABSS human resources department.
The current number of teaching vacancies – and particularly the hardest-to-fill EC teaching positions – is in line with the trends long-cited by ABSS officials.
ABSS and North Carolina school officials have warned for years about a coming shortage of K-12 public school teachers due to an ongoing decline in enrollment in university schools of education and other educator preparation programs. The N.C. Department of Public Instruction reported earlier this year that there had been an 18 percent decline in the number of prospective teachers who completed educator preparation programs between 2023 and 2024.
Support from administrators and starting pay for teachers common concerns
Contrary to popular belief, the biggest concern that Evans typically hears from new teachers isn’t student discipline problems: they want to know that their administrators have their backs, she said.
“It’s the support they’re looking for from the other adults in the building,” said Evans, who believes that the level of support for beginning teachers is crucial to their continuing in the profession.
Starting pay for teachers, which is set by the General Assembly as part of the state’s biennial budget, also continues to be a concern, according to the school system’s two BT coordinators.
Evans recalled that, when she began her teaching career in another N.C. public school system in 2000, the starting pay was $25,000. Twenty-five years later, the starting pay for N.C. public schools is $41,000, based on the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget, she said.
[Story continues below photo.]
Nevertheless, some of the 250 BTs in ABSS have taken pay cuts to pursue a career in teaching because they feel strongly about the importance of the profession, according to Evans and Jones. As an example, a former lawyer is now teaching at Western Middle School; and a former doctor of social work is now teaching at Woodlawn Middle School, the BT coordinators said in the interview.
Other types of support for BTs
ABSS is scheduled to hold an orientation session for the newest BTs on August 11. They’ll be welcomed by superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming and hear from other BTs who’ve progressed to the second and third years of their induction period about such things as setting expectations for their students; developing lesson plans; and building relationships with students and their parents.
The school system’s annual summer symposium, as well as a Beginning Teacher Institute, held over four days late last month drew more than 400 teachers, at varying stages in their careers, who were eager to begin brainstorming for the 2025-26 school year, Adkins said in a subsequent interview with the newspaper.
The BT Base Camp and BT Classroom Closet at Sellars-Gunn will be open before and after school once the new school year begins on Monday, August 25.
