Helping teachers for 25 years to get back on top
Just when you think it can’t get any better, it gets better.
As the Peer Intervention Program (PIP) celebrates its 25th anniversary, Program Coordinator Lynne Ann Kilroy credits a practice of “constantly refining what we do, constantly evolving,” for the program’s success in helping struggling teachers reach their professional potential.
PIP has since 1988 been answering cries for help from teachers who, for whatever reason, realize they are not at the top of their game.
Over the years, approximately 2,000 teachers have participated in the program with most making it back to the top and some 200 others switching to new careers after realizing teaching was not for them.
Founder Clare Cohen said PIP was former UFT President Sandy Feldman’s response to charges that the union was protecting incompetent teachers
To answer those charges, which continue to this day, the UFT and the DOE collaboratively created a program to help teachers who had lost confidence or were struggling.
From the beginning, the voluntary program has had a waiting list of applicants — teachers of all ages, in all stages of their careers, with a wide variety of pedagogical problems, all eager to sign on.
Cohen said teachers who come to PIP deserve credit.
“It’s hard to ask for help, and even harder to know you are not up to par,” she said. Making a significant difference for teachers is what makes our work so “absolutely exhilarating,” she said.
Letters of testimony from participants reveal how painful it can be for teachers to acknowledge their struggles and how liberating to regain their sense of sureness.
“PIP took an experienced educator who had lost her confidence and was barely making it through the day and made me a confident and more competent teacher for my students,” one said. Another noted: “I was a teacher for more than 27 years whose tool box was in disarray. PIP helped me put it back in working order and add some more tools to the box.”
In some cases the positive outcomes impact the whole school. “Not only did I learn a tremendous amount from my year in the program,” a PIP participant said, “I was honored to turnkey many of the things I learned with my colleagues. They saw the positive impact on my students last year and are motivated and encouraged to implement what they saw me do.”
A study found that nine out of 10 PIP participants surveyed maintained their progress and S ratings five years after completing the program.
Each struggling teacher who comes to PIP is matched with an intervenor, a master teacher in the same license area who designs individualized strategies and works directly and regularly with the educator in the school.
The peer assistance is provided on a voluntary and confidential basis, as required by the UFT’s contract with the city. For the first three months of an intervention, the teacher getting help from PIP is to be neither evaluated nor observed by supervisors at the school.
Principals, who are at first reluctant to have PIP in the building, “wind up referring teachers to the program and asking for our lesson plan models,” said Kilroy who, before becoming PIP coordinator in 2007, logged 18 years as a middle school English teacher, 13 years as a chapter leader and four years as an intervenor.
The key to PIP’s success has been its responsiveness to both the changing needs of UFT members in the schools and the latest educational research.
It has since its founding broadened its mission to include guidance counselors. It has also added a licensed mental health practitioner, who rounds out PIP’s holistic approach to struggling teachers. And, it has brought on a career specialist to help those participants who end up switching jobs.
Marilyn Chadwick said her years as coordinator from 2002 to 2007 under Chancellor Joel Klein were stressful, as the Department of Education pressured PIP to increase intervenors’ caseloads from four to six, which reduced time spent with each teacher in the classroom.
“It was not a kind time,” Chadwick said. “But we held it together.”
Even with the higher caseloads, PIP kept improving and gaining attention both in the city and nationally, she said.
Then, during the chaotic Bloomberg years the number of teachers asking for help doubled and then tripled. Still, PIP’s intervenors continued to prove their professionalism and resilience.
Today, the program helps teachers face a growing number of new mandates and other stressful changes — testing, paperwork, evaluations, new curriculum standards, administrators with no education background and more. But PIP staff are keen to take on whatever comes their way.
“We are all Type A personalities,” Kilroy said of her staff. “Driven to be the best we can and always ready to learn new strategies and take on new challenges to keep us moving forward.”