What’s Next for ELP After the Pilot Wraps Up

As ELP’s two-year pilot program wraps up this month, I sat down with Dan Burkhalter to discuss his original expectations for the program, how it unfolded in reality, and what’s next.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Monika Jansen: What were your expectations for the ELP program going into the pilot?

Dan Burkhalter: I don’t think we really knew what to expect. We were pretty confident our model was sound and would work, because the people who created it had a wide range of expertise and practical experience. We knew we could make a contribution towards the problem of New Teachers leaving the profession. 

We expected that teachers would step up as mentors and coaches. We expected it would be challenging since teachers’ unions had never done anything like this. Beyond that, we knew the pilot would be an iterative process.

MJ: What did the pilot look like in reality?

DB: Identifying and recruiting New Teachers, Building Mentors, and Virtual Instructional Coaches took longer than we expected. However, all participants came to it with an open mind and eagerness about the experiment. They fully embraced two roles: Implementing the model and helping us learn along the way. We did our own continuous improvement with Building Mentors and Virtual Instructional Coaches. We made adjustments as quickly as we could and if we couldn’t, we’d explain why we couldn’t or didn’t. We got great feedback from that responsiveness.

Another reality we were facing - and I knew this from my career generally and my two daughters who are teachers specifically - is that teachers were miserable going through COVID. On top of that, their work lives are dictated by top-down directives, and they feel like they’re under attack from every quarter - from families, students, the community, administrators. 

Some Building Mentors and Virtual Instructional Coaches told me that they instruct their own children not to follow in their footsteps. I’m still coming to grips with this. But it also validates the need for the teacher-centered ELP program. We are not trying to fix everything that impacts a New Teacher’s life. We are trying to focus on what’s in our ability to influence. A New Teacher can make choices about how they’re going to engage students. A Building Mentor or Virtual Instructional Coach has the choice to offer a New Teacher support. Our premise is that one teacher can change a classroom, a classroom can change a school, a school can change a district. 

The other reality is that union leadership have stuck with the program, even with so much coming at them.

MJ: Did you reach your goals for the pilot?

DB: Our main goal was to understand if there is any evidence that our model helps New Teachers stay in the profession and move them further along in their teaching practice competency. I think there’s going to be evidence that we’re headed in the right direction. 

A secondary goal was to learn by doing, and we learned a lot. 

MJ: What are you most proud of?

DB: I am proud of the state affiliates and participants. I’m proud of the superintendents willing to let us experiment with their New Teachers. They took a leap of faith to try something different. As someone who’s responsible for running a school district, that’s no small feat.

MJ: What’s next for ELP now that the pilot program is over?

DB: This summer, we will get the results of the summative assessment, which will inform how we keep tweaking the model. 

In our next phase, we will continue providing this model free of charge across participating Midwestern states. We want to increase the number of New Teachers in the program so we can keep improving the model and start scaling it up. By the 2024-25 school year, our goal is to create a viable business model for a union-led organization that will contract with school districts.

Between now and then, we will build relationships with local association presidents and school superintendents and promote this as worthy of their school districts’ investment. 

If you’re an educator, local president, or school superintendent who would like to be involved in the next phase of ELP, contact us for more information at info@educatorsleadingtheprofession.org.