Being an Effective Mentor

How to Help Beginning Teachers Succeed

Kathleen Feeney Jonson, Kathleen F. Jonson

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412940627, 9781412940610
• eBook ISBN: 9781452294032
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Strengthen your mentoring skills to significantly impact a new teacher?s career!

A skilled mentor can make a major difference in helping novice teachers succeed and thrive during that all-important first year. This updated edition of the best-selling book, Being an Effective Mentor strengthens practicing mentors? skills with updated strategies to help protégés develop confidence and expertise as teachers.

Educator and mentoring expert Kathleen Feeney Jonson identifies the skills and experiences that nurture beginning teachers and provides specific, research-based techniques for mentors, such as demonstration teaching, positive observation and feedback, informal communication, role modeling, and providing direct assistance. Readers will find guidance for using reflections to promote discovery, an action plan for professional development, and month-by-month mentoring activities for building productive mentor/mentee relationships and promoting best teaching practices.

This second edition demonstrates how to help new instructors improve instructional, interpersonal, and coping skills; examines the components of successful mentoring initiatives; and offers new information on:

• The stages of teacher needs and development
• Professional growth for long-term teaching success
• Assessment of student work
• Working with difficult mentees
• The role of mentors within teacher induction programs

This straightforward resource helps mentors guide beginning teachers on a rewarding and satisfying path of careerlong development and offers invaluable assistance for administrators who plan to establish a mentoring program or revitalize an existing one.

PART I

Setting the Stage for
the Teacher-Mentor

1

Passing the Torch

Those having torches will pass them on to others.

—Plato, The Republic

Twenty second graders stand in line inside the door to Room 3D at Lincoln Elementary School. “Kyle cut!” Cameron insists, gripping his folder and lunch box. Ms. Blackwell glances at the boys, but Kyle denies the accusation. The clock ticks to 2:40 p.m., and the bell rings. With a weary smile, Ms. Blackwell waves good-bye and watches as the children scurry out, the two boys still arguing. Feeling a sense of relief, she turns back into the classroom. Too late, she discovers that Caitlin has forgotten to put her chair up on her table again, and Danny hasn't picked up his pencil from the floor as she asked him to do. She must work on better follow-through.

Ms. Blackwell kneels to pick up Danny's pencil, lifts up Caitlin's chair, and returns to her desk. Sighing, she looks at the pile of spelling papers on her desk, the large, dark letters carefully—or not so carefully—printed on wide lines. With a glance, she can tell that most of the words on the top paper are misspelled. She had been so sure that her new study-in-buddies idea would work, but apparently it hadn't. At least not for everyone.

Ms. Blackwell sets aside the papers, too disheartened to review them. Her eyes burn as she reflects on her day. Again today, Maggie complained that James was chasing her on the playground. The experiment Ms. Blackwell had planned for the unit on rocks was too difficult. And her throat is burning—but she can't take time off and leave her class with a substitute. She looks at her desk. Oh, and there's that form she was supposed to have returned to the office yesterday. She should take care of that now—except that she doesn't really understand it. Besides, she needs to get to a teachers’ meeting by 3:00. She was late to the last one. Better be on time for this one. Don't want to appear unable to manage.

Ms. Blackwell plants the late form in the middle of her desk so she will be sure to see it first thing when she returns, gathers her papers for the meeting, grabs a tissue for her runny nose, and heads out into the hall. She wonders if any of the other new teachers have these problems or if it's just her.

She had done so well at the university, had loved student teaching with Mr. Beverly. What had happened? Would it ever get easier? She had worked so hard last August to set up her classroom perfectly, tacking up colorful wall coverings and organizing things as discussed in her university classes. Everyone—her professors and friends and the people at Mr. Beverly's school—had assured her that she would make a great teacher. But she doesn't seem to be doing so well now. She tries to think about how Mr. Beverly might handle James. But the boys in Mr. Beverly's fourth grade hadn't chased the girls. Seems that few of the problems she faces now came up when she student-taught with Mr. Beverly. If only she had a Mr. Beverly to turn to now.

The anxieties and frustrations that Ms. Blackwell feels are typical of first-year teachers—and sometimes of teachers in general. No matter how well prepared a beginning teacher may be on entering the profession—no matter how positive her preservice experience—the early years are always difficult. Issues of classroom and time management commonly cause significant stress. The tasks to be completed seem endless, and when a problem arises, the teacher, alone in the classroom, cannot turn to a coworker for immediate support as another professional in another field might do. Too often during their first years of on-the-job training, teachers throughout history have had to master their craft by trial and error, in an isolated environment, with little feedback.

The first two years of teaching are particularly critical. During this time, the teacher builds the foundation for what could be a satisfying and productive career. But these first two years are also considered by many to be the hardest. In this profession, unlike in others, the beginning teacher has the same workload and responsibilities as the veteran. Teachers are expected to be experts ready to tackle the biggest challenges on the first day they enter a school (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2004, p. 2). There is no period for adjustment. What might seem to be the simple mechanics of running a real-world classroom from day to day prove to be surprisingly distressing and stressful.

The result? Often during this “induction” period, beginning teachers become frustrated and eager to leave. Far too many report lying awake, unable to sleep at night, fretting about their students and school responsibilities. According to a survey of stress in various professions, teachers (followed by nurses, accountants, and newspaper reporters) are the people most likely to report losing sleep over work-related worries (“Losing Sleep,” 2001). This beginning teacher sheds some light on the problem:

Stress! You're teaching classes all day long. You're keeping students on task, you're testing, you're trying to follow all the rules—every principle and guideline that's set out for you. You're adhering to a schedule: you must teach all the things in the course of study by the end of the year. After school you go home and take your job with you. Then you must face kids who have homework and a husband who has had a tough day, too (quoted in Gordon & Maxey, 2000, p. 66).

To many in their first year of teaching, then, figuring out how to control students whose first instincts are anything but cooperative makes just surviving a real accomplishment. Without assistance and support, these beginning teachers burn out early at a high rate. Some, overwhelmed by all the “juggling” they have to do, leave the teaching profession altogether. Nationwide, 30% of beginning teachers leave the profession within two years, another 10% leave after three years, and more than half leave within five to seven years (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2004, p. 1; Ingersoll, 2001, p. 514; Pearson & Honig, 1992, p. 5). In urban districts, attrition occurs even faster: Half the new teachers are gone within three years (Haberman, 1987; Zimpher & Grossman, 1992, p. 141). According to the Alliance for Excellent Education (2004), the current “rate of attrition among beginning teachers is astronomical.”

And this rate of attrition affects everyone: the community that must continue to recruit and train new teachers, the teachers who find themselves leaving a career they had spent years preparing for, and the children. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) has gathered information on teacher preparation since the early 1990s and has published many reports on the relationship between teacher quality and student success. In a 2003 report, No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's School Children, the commission states,

Schools pay a price as high turnover rates force an annual scramble to replace those who leave. Teachers pay a price as their frustrations lead to short-circuited careers. But students pay the highest prices of all: diminished learning and dreams denied (p. 11).

Particularly disturbing is research indicating that the most academically proficient teachers are also the ones who are most likely to leave the field (Schlechty & Vance, 1983; Smith, 1993, p. 6). In a study of beginning teachers in San Diego County, California, a teacher leaving the profession after her first year had received one of only six National Education Outstanding Student Teacher Awards (Mathison, 1996, p. 15). The loss of such a potentially exceptional teacher clearly indicates that something is wrong. And according to First Lady Laura Bush's Ready to Read, Ready to Learn initiative, “teachers with higher standardized test scores leave teaching at much higher rates than those with lower scores” (2001, p. 11).

Why would someone who had spent four to six years preparing for a profession leave the career within a year or two? What is it that makes beginning teacher after beginning teacher feel as if his years of study have left him unprepared for the world of teaching? And how can this situation be changed to benefit the children in U.S. classrooms?

ENTER THE MENTOR

Throughout the United States, educational systems began to realize in the early 1980s that a serious problem existed: Teachers need assistance and guidance, especially during their early years in the profession. According to No Dream Denied, teacher retention relates strongly not only to adequate preparation (background in subject matter and teaching methods) but also to meaningful induction and mentoring programs (NCTAF, 2003). No matter how well prepared, a teacher such as Ms. Blackwell needs someone to turn to with the inevitable questions and problems that arise as she begins her profession in the classroom.

With this recognition, more than 30 states now mandate support for beginning teachers as part of their teacher induction programs (Portner, 1998, p. 3). Increasingly, school districts are arranging for experienced teachers (mentors) to guide beginning teachers (mentees or protégés) through the difficult early years and to help them develop as professionals. And although this book focuses on support for beginning teachers, it is important to note that teachers new to a system also often need assistance (Smith, 1993, p. 7). In some locations, mentors have been recruited to work not only with beginning teachers but also with teachers new to the district or even with experienced teachers having difficulty. Both of the two latter groups of teachers need practical assistance with tasks such as making schedules for breaks and for lunch, hall, and yard duties, and they need information about where to get supplies and materials, about required forms and meetings, and so on. Like newcomers to the profession, veterans moving to a different location need a realistic view of their new school to help them “understand the challenges that inevitably surface when people experience the transition from one job to another” (Gordon & Maxey, 2000, p. 84). Mentors can help the newcomer understand the culture and philosophy of the school and can provide the emotional and intellectual support needed in the early days and months of adjustment.

The idea of a mentor helping a beginner is nothing new. The term mentor itself dates back to the eighth or ninth century BCE, specifically to Homer's Odyssey. In his epic poem, Homer describes his hero, Odysseus, as Odysseus prepares to set out on a 10-year voyage. Odysseus must leave behind his son, Telemachus, and asks his trusted friend Mentor to guide and counsel Telemachus in his absence. While the father is gone, Mentor serves as a sage adviser to the younger man, helping him grow intellectually, emotionally, and socially. From this ancient literary figure, mentor has come to refer to a wise and faithful counselor who helps guide a protégé through a developmental process. This could be the process of transition from youth to adulthood, as in the case of Telemachus, or from student to professional, as with a first-year teacher.

Modern-day mentors are found in many segments of society. The Big Brother and Big Sister programs are based on the mentor concept: Responsible adults are paired with children; they build a trusting relationship with those children and share with them a variety of activities, guiding them as they grow into young adults. Athletic or drama coaches could also be considered mentors, directing novices in their field. In the professional arena, doctors and lawyers have long been mentored through internship programs, and plumbers, printers, and other skilled tradespeople serve in apprenticeships, another variation of mentorships.

As these examples illustrate, the skills involved, age groups, and degree of formality vary widely among mentoring programs. The common thread, though, is that all such programs are based on a trusting relationship between an experienced adult and a novice. In each case, the organization or business that wants to retain and develop its members provides some sort of mentor support. The idea is not for the mentor to evaluate or judge the protégé, but rather for the mentee to receive guidance. The mentor is defined more by the relationship with a beginner than by a position or title.

Some such relationships happen spontaneously. For example, a new employee asks advice of a more experienced colleague, who sees potential in the beginner and continues to offer support. Other pairings result from a considered design. Large corporations, for example, sometimes match senior managers to ambitious, talented junior employees. Mentors in this situation may help newer employees with such issues as balancing personal and business lives, as well as working within the corporate environment. The mentees learn that their concerns are not unique—that other employees have experienced the same problems—and this knowledge helps them grow professionally.

According to several studies, mentors have played an important role in the career development of many highly successful people in business. In one study, researchers found that businesspeople who had mentors earned more money at a younger age and were more satisfied with their work and career advancement than were those without mentors (Bolton, 1980; Odell, 1990, p. 5; Roche, 1979). Mentoring programs in business were found to help the protégé with personal adjustment, satisfaction, and professional achievement (Bova, 1987; Cohen, 1995, p. 4; Kram, 1985; Marsick, 1987; Zey, 1984). In both university and business settings, protégés of mentors learned risk-taking behaviors, communication skills, political skills, and specific skills that helped them in their professions (Bova & Phillips, 1983; Odell, 1990, p. 6). Even in government, mentors have helped employees develop their careers and prepare for senior positions (Cohen, 1995, p. 4; Murray, 1991).

Mentoring would seem to be a natural progression in the teaching profe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• PART I SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE TEACHER-MENTOR
• PART II EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR THE GOOD MENTOR
• PART III PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER