Mentoring beginning teachers: guiding, reflecting, coaching

Abstract

New teachers once shared the unhappy experience of being set adrift in their first classrooms, relying only on what they had learned in preservice courses or picked up from brief stints of student teaching. This is fortunately no longer the case, for preservice and inservice programs have wisely enlisted practicing veteran teachers as mentors to help beginning teachers start their careers with confidence and support. Mentoring enables beginning teachers to explore their beliefs and challenge their assumptions about teaching under the watchful guidance of more experienced colleagues.This book offers strategies for those K-12 teachers who work as mentors with beginning teachers in their school districts. The authors provide a view of mentoring beginning teachers that is enlightening and rewarding for both the mentor and the novice. By modeling reflective thinking practices mentors enhance both their own and the beginning teacher's professional growth. And drawing from their own experiences, mentors respond to questions from novices with practical ideas supported by sound theoretical principles.The authors illustrate how to move the beginning teacher beyond the typical plan-teach-evaluate mode to a higher level of joint assessment and reflection. The authors provide philosophical insights, a theoretical framework, and mentoring models and strategies for working with beginning educators. Specific teacher anecdotes, journal entries, reflective writings, and other illustrations provide examples of ongoing mentor/beginning teacher communications. Also included are recommendations for mentor/beginning teacher pairings, questions to open collegial conversations, prompts for teacher reflection, and a section on the most commonly asked mentor questions. These practical ideas, substantiated by theoretical principles, encourage a rich, rewarding mentoring experience for both the mentor and the beginning teacher.