QUICK RESOURCE SHEET #7

Mentoring programs

*excerpt from NFIE site

*Imagine that you aspire to be a mountaineer. You have a new pair of boots, a tent, a backpack, and endless enthusiasm, but you have never so much as climbed above the tree line. "There are two ways to get into it," observes Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel-laureate physicist at The Ohio State University, co-author of Redesigning Education. "You could take a practice run with somebody who has lots of experience and the ability to share it. The other way is to be taken to the base of Everest, dropped off, and told to get to the top or quit. If you don't make it, your enthusiasm disappears, and you seek ways to avoid similar challenges in the future."

Maybe you’d like to design a mentoring program at your school, or perhaps you would like to offer your expertise to the new teachers in your program. If you are new to teaching, you might like to discuss the possibility of pairing up newer and more experienced instructors – to the benefit of all. To learn more about these intriguing possibilities, check out the following resources.

http://www.nfie.org/publications/mentoring.htm

Georgia Archibald, a retired teacher from Missouri, defines mentoring as a process that opens the doors to the school community and helps new faculty find the wisdom of all the teachers in the building. California teacher Lynette Henley characterizes mentoring as "going next door to that new person and saying, 'What can I do for you?'" Her retired colleague Ellen Logue adds: "A mentor helps teachers make sense of the realities that they face in teaching, learn their significance, and use what they have learned to improve their teaching skills."

http://www.benzhi.com/page.php?id=42

“Most people remember the first day that they walked into their own classroom. For some, it was a frightening experience. For others, it was one of life’s most rewarding experiences. But to get into the classroom and receive this memory, there had to be some training somewhere.”

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Mittica-Mentoring.html

“…it is incumbent on us to break through the isolation and fragmentation of the teaching profession by becoming leaders in our school communities and actively mentor new mainstream classroom teachers in effective ESL teaching practices.”