TLINC is an effort of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, Seattle Public Schools, the University of Washington, and the Seattle Education Association to provide support to new teachers. It is based on needs identified in a report on the Staff Training, Assistance Review (STAR) program--a District/Union induction program--completed in May, 2004. The needs of new teachers that TLINC will address include:

• Promoting collaborative inquiry around student learning;
• Supporting mentees? emotional, technical and standards-based needs;
• Integrating new teachers into the larger school community;
• Providing avenues for connecting both within the school and to the larger school community;
• Integrating shared wisdom to create a knowledge-building community;
• Offering opportunity to see what successful teaching looks like (e.g. video clips).

Soon, electronic tools will be available to STAR participants for the purposes of encouraging collaboration and learning opportunities that will enhance the learning of classroom students.

The information that follows is an update of the progress of the TLINC project and some of its history.

Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC)
Planning Grant Background and Update

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) and its Design Partners (a group of five organizations and leaders with expertise in teacher preparation, new teacher induction, and online learning communities), developed TLINC (Teachers Learning in Online Communities) with support from a planning grant from the AT&T Foundation.  The Design Partners were the International Society for Technology in Education, SRI International, Pepperdine University, and the Education Development Center's Center for Children and Technology and Center for Online Professional Development.  Additional support came from Judi Harris at the College of William and Mary and Metiri Group.  TLINC aims to improve new teacher retention and support teacher learning by addressing three categories of need expressed by novice teachers and cited in teacher retention literature:  access to high quality teaching resources, frequent access to experts (mentors and coaches), and ongoing peer support.  The model builds upon research on teacher learning, communities of practice, and online learning to create a learner-centered, flexible, and interactive approach to meeting the needs of new teachers.  The ultimate goals are more effective teaching and faster development of novice teachers into skilled educators.

The TLINC model seeks to develop novice teachers' reflective practice in a professional community.  Rather than providing a "one size fits all" solution, the Design Team agreed that district involvement, including teachers across the spectrum of experience, was critical for district-level design and buy-in.  Thus, TLINC helps districts explore ways to build collegial support and skilled guidance that use innovative strategies and technologies to "think outside the proximity boxes" of time and geographic location.  A key component of the project design is close collaboration between a higher education institution that prepares new teachers and the school district it serves.

Four districts participated in the first year of TLINC planning activities.  District planning meetings, typically lasting one to two days, involved key personnel from the school district, school administrators, mentors and new teachers, and representatives of the local higher education teacher preparation providers.  At each site, the local educators shared their concerns about how new teachers were supported in their district and offered suggestions for changes to enhance their induction and mentoring programs.  The Design Team also provided a demonstration of current online tools that support communication and community.  Following these demonstrations and discussions, the district teams ranked the kinds of tools they believed would be most valuable for meeting their needs. 

With support from Microsoft, NCTAF will take the TLINC concept into additional districts.  Targeting those districts that showed readiness for a collaborative teaching continuum through the SST project, the Microsoft grant will make it possible to expand TLINC in Seattle, Washington (working with the University of Washington), and to begin activities in Memphis, Tennessee (with the University of Memphis), and Denver and Jefferson County, Colorado (with the University of Colorado at Denver).

A recent policy paper titled (Aug. 2005) Induction into Learning Communities, presents NCTAF's vision for new teacher induction into strong schools that support a career of continuous professional growth. The paper examines data on induction's impact on teacher retention and emerging information on induction's effects on improving student learning, and goes in-depth on models of strong mentoring programs in the U.S. and comprehensive induction systems in other countries.  You can download the paper from NCTAF's Web site.