By Tyler Dahlgren

Special Education teachers are, by nature, a passionate bunch. The job isn’t always a cake walk, but it can be tremendously rewarding, and they’re not in this profession by mistake.

“They come into this field, almost one hundred percent of the time, to make a difference,” said Dr. Pam Brezenski. “They are amazing teachers and they have so many great ideas.”

Before she joined the staff at ESU 13, Brezenski was a second career special education teacher with a fervor for the field that’s still growing as you read this.

“When I entered education, I finally found my home,” Brezenski said. “When I entered special education, I immediately fell in love with it. I loved going to work every day, and I loved what I did.”

Through the years, though, Brezenski could sense a decline in morale from her colleagues. The culprit, be it a lack of support or a lack of resources, helped contribute to a shortage in highly-qualified special education teachers and glaring retention issues across the state.

“I wanted to help build something that could make those teachers fall in love with the field again,” said Brezenski. “Something that could help them stay passionate about this particular field so that Nebraska students have that perfect teacher with those great qualities.”

Attrition isn’t a recent phenomenon. Dr. Amanda Witte, a research associate professor with UNL’s Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (CYFS), said the trend has been monitored for years. Attention on the issue was heightened during the pandemic.

When things started getting back to normal, CYFS, ESU 13 and the Nebraska Department of Education collaborated on a study that dove deep into what was driving special education teachers out of the field. Dr. Witte and research assistant professor Dr. HyeonJin Yoon gathered data specific to Nebraska and wrote a report.

“We knew a lot from the literature about what’s contributing to teacher attrition,” said Witte. “Now we also had this data that was really specific to Nebraska that we could use to build an intervention to increase special education teacher retention, especially for teachers new to the field.”

The team secured funding for the project from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, with a subcontract from NDE, and began to build the plane as they flew it. 

Get SET Nebraska was born, a shining example of sheer collaboration between the state’s largest university, a service unit in the Nebraska Panhandle and NDE, who all bring something unique to the table, said project co-director and NDE’s assistant administrator for special education Micki Charf.

“It really weds a lot of the strengths that we each have in common,” added Witte. “There’s a really strong evaluation component, which is what my team provides. It’s incredibly critical for students and families across the state as we retain special education teachers to meet all the needs of Nebraska’s students.”

A comprehensive mentorship and professional development program, Get SET Nebraska is filling a tremendous need, one school leaders and stakeholders cannot afford to ignore. Getting teachers into the field is one thing. Keeping them there is another.

“We know that the first three years of a teacher’s career, they are highly susceptible and vulnerable to leaving the profession,” said Charf. “If we can get them through those first three years, the longevity rate and the likelihood of sustaining a career in education has greatly increased.”

Mentorship is the foundation of Get SET’s model. Training teachers with more experience to guide the younger generation through what can be a challenging profession, especially in those critical early years. Get SET Nebraska also includes an Administrative Leadership Academy for school leaders seeking difference-making methods to support special education staff. The Get SET team used research from the Council of Exceptional Children, the Cedar Center, and a multitude of other national resources on the best practices for supporting special education teachers when constructing the academy. Feeling supported, for teachers and for everybody, really, is imperative to success.

“That’s what the whole program is really about,” said Brezenski, “the empowering of teachers, the empowering of administrators. If you instill people with knowledge, they’re going to be able to do better. We can’t do better if we don’t know better.”

A School District’s Perspective

For DC West Community Schools, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Their administrative team first heard wind of Get SET Nebraska while taking the initial steps towards implementing a formalized mentoring program in the district. The program’s focus on retention was what caught the eye of Nicki Pechous, director of student services.

“We’re a growing district with a growing Special Education program, and, having been in the special ed world for a while, I know how tight the market is and how we’re competing with everybody around the metro area for qualified special education teachers,” Pechous said.

Pechous is not wrong. The Nebraska Teacher Vacancy Survey, administered every year, revealed that special education has been the top area of shortage for five years running. For the team at DC West, who’ve used the program since it launched in 2022, Get SET Nebraska made an immediate impact.

“It was nice to have that toolkit of resources ready to hand off,” Pechous said. “It’s more productive than telling our mentor teachers, ‘Alright, mentor these new teachers who are coming right out of college, moving to a new place and don’t know what they’re in for.’ Those resources have been so valuable.”

The platform is easy to access and easy to use. Charf credits Witte and Brezenski for that.

“What we fold in from the NDE vantage point is showing how this is applicable, how this fits into a district’s continuous improvement plan,” Charf said. “If people view this as an enhancement and not just a straightaway way to boost numbers, they’re going to get so much more out of the program via relationships, via quality services and via a quality teaching staff that truly does lift each other up with that component of a very caring, supportive and knowledgeable leadership team.”

Pechous and the team at DC West are the perfect testament. Kelsey Nabity, the district’s mentor coordinator, elaborated on how simple the program is to utilize. Mentors already have a caseload of their own, students they’re tasked with serving every day. Piling another thing on their plates would be counterproductive, she explained.

“It’s right there for them, a resource that is easily accessible and easy to use,” Nabity continued. “They essentially grab their handouts and materials and go have their conversations and discuss what they need to discuss. It allows our mentors to be the best mentors they can possibly be and our young teachers to be the best teachers they can be.”

And they can be really, really good.

“The first-year teachers we’ve had go through this process are definitely one hundred percent all in and very passionate,” said Pechous. “But it is a hard caseload. It can be a really hard job. We’re faced with a lot of challenges, so being able to support them with the mentor and from the administrative side, being able to help navigate them through those situations, it’s just crucial.”

Pechous called Get SET Nebraska the ultimate roadmap towards supporting young special education teachers and building mentors and relationships within the district. Teachers receive excellent training in college, she said, but there’s a gap between walking across the stage at graduation and taking on a full caseload. 

This resource can help bridge that gap, and it’s completely free to school districts.

“The Get SET Nebraska program naturally leads to conversations where you’re building collaboration as a team, between the administrator, your mentor and your new special education teacher, especially in the first few modules you do together,” Nabity said. “Therefore, when it comes to be October, November and December, when the enthusiasm tends to slide, you already have a support system in place that you can lean on.”

The mentors benefit from the experience too, a component that brings things full circle. Teachers are, by nature, lifelong learners after all.

“We’ve even had mentors in the program say, ‘Man, I wish we had this program around when we were starting out,’” Brezenski said. “And it wasn’t because these teachers don’t have gifts and skills and abilities. They do, and they do amazing things. They just needed a little extra guidance. They needed to feel like they were part of a team. For me, that’s been the biggest eye-opener. There are some amazing administrative teams and mentors out there.”

Since it was launched, more than 100 new special education teachers have been supported by Get SET Nebraska. Nearly every single one has provided positive feedback. 

For the Get SET Nebraska team, that means the world.

To learn more, visit www.getsetnebraska.org today!