Leonard Flynn Elementary School 2016-2017 Innovation Awards

Flynn Elementary School will use an Innovation Award in 2016-17 to help their new teachers inside and outside the classrooms so they feel successful while teaching.  

Flynn Elementary School faces a challenge that SFUSD is facing on the whole: high teacher turnover rates. In SFUSD, 21% of teachers quit after their first year of teaching and 50% quit before they have made it to their fifth year of teaching. Specifically at Flynn, last year the school had six new classroom teachers and six new staff, and four teachers left during the school year. This year Flynn has nine new classroom teachers and ten new staff members and three have already left this year. New teachers are met with a lot of new information about effective teaching strategies but also about Flynn’s specific academic model. It is difficult to internalize and implement all this information in order to be an effective teacher for students. This challenge is even more pressing because it is likely that students who need the most support are in classrooms with new teachers. By focusing support on new teachers, they will feel more successful in their first year and will be more likely to stay at Flynn for many years to come.