Pop quiz:
What is the category on a teacher evaluation form that can cause the sweat glands on the palms of novice educators to rain just like a West Virginia July?
If you said, “classroom management,” you get an A.
Teachers in Monongalia County, though, can get the extra coping help they need in that thorny rubric — thanks to a partnership between the Board of Education and Claire St. Peter, a psychology professor at West Virginia University, who specializes in behavioral issues.
The BOE last week re-upped its partnership with the professor for the coaching and mentoring program she calls ECRISP (Educator Coaching Instruction and Support Program). St. Peter helped create it.
Five county teachers worked through the inaugural program this past year, school board administrator Tiffany Barnett said.
Barnett, who directs the district’s education program for those students deemed exceptional, began her career as a middle school teacher 20 years ago.
It could have easily been two centuries ago, she said, given the sociopolitical ripples that have changed the landscape over the years.
The state’s ongoing opioid crisis and generational cycles of poverty have only added to the academic angst, Barnett said.
Students now come to school both agitated and exhausted, the educator said.
“We weren’t even thinking of this in 2000,” she said.
Now she’s thinking of ways to better promote ECRISP.
As said, five teachers took part in the 2018-19 school year. Two teach in elementary schools in the county.
Two more are middle school teachers. The fifth teaches high school.
All are relatively new to their careers, Barnett said, but ECRISP is open to any educator in the district. Board members renewed the contract at $27,060, which comes from levy funds.
“It’s really about setting and meeting goals in your classrooms and for your kids,” she said.
The BOE also dipped into the levy for $52,470, which it will use this coming year to fund St. Peter’s Behavioral Education Assisting Children in Overcoming Needs iniative — BEACON, for short.
She launched it in 2012.
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