The San Juan Unified School District (SJUSD) provides support for veteran teachers through the Peer Assistance and Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) programs through a partnership with the San Juan Teachers Association (SJTA)

 

Guiding Principles 

 

• Ensure high quality teaching and learning for all students in the district
• Collaboration and partnership built upon trust and transparency between the District and Union
• Support for veteran teachers by teacher leader

 

Peer Assistance

 

Classroom teachers may request assistance with their teaching practice through voluntary peer assistance. In order to do so the teacher must have achieved permanent status, wants to improve his/her teaching performance and has made a request via the San Juan Teachers Association (SJTA). The contact person at SJTA is either Barry Roth, President of SJTA, or Ed Burgess, Associate Executive Director of SJTA. The PAR Panel will then assign a Consulting Teacher to assist the teacher receiving voluntary peer assistance. According to contract language a teacher participating in peer assistance may terminate his/her participation at any time. Any documentation of the teacher receiving voluntary peer assistance will remain the property of the teacher receiving voluntary peer assistance and will not be placed in the teacher’s personnel file. Also, all communication and documentation between the teacher receiving voluntary peer assistance and the Consulting Teacher will be confidential and will not be shared with other individuals including the site principal unless the Consulting Teacher has written consent from the teacher receiving voluntary peer assistance.

 

 Peer Assistance and Review (PAR)

 

When a teacher has been determined to not meet two or more standards of the California Standards of the Teaching Profession, an Improvement Plan is created in consultation with the referred teacher, their administrator and a Consulting Teacher. The Consulting Teacher works with the referred teacher to implement the Improvement Plan. The Consulting Teacher provides support and documentation of progress. Every 6 weeks reports of progress are made to the PAR Governance Panel.