Mentor Analysis

Bill Payne, as a new administrator had come inherited a school environment, complete with a faculty every administrator would dream of. Experience and innovations were known aspects of the campus. Mr. Payne expected these veteran teachers to be fully accepting of mentoring an training of new teachers. However, what he found, was a group of veteran teachers who were reluctant to share their craft.

The research offers vital characteristics to sub-question I: What it takes to create a successful school-base mentor program? First, it must take into consideration the need for a leadership, encouraged program. A school-based mentoring program must have a logical model theory that states, and encourages positive actions and outcomes. A clear mission, with goals, and an exit plan is needed. Internal and external factors will influence the program’s effectiveness and they need to be taken into consideration when building a model program. The end goal for a school-based mentoring program is to achieve meaningful and measurable results.

Darling (1984) discusses 14 roles of a mentor including; an energiser, an investor a feedback giver and a roe model (Gopee, 2008). Suggesting that a mentor should have a motivational attitude, willing to give their time, knowledge and experience freely thus aiming to teach at every given opportunity (Casey and Clark, 2011; Gleeson, 2008). Moreover, the mentor should uphold the highest of standards and be someone who is held in high regard by their peers and students, this will become effective when giving constructive feedback to the student and facilitating reflection (Kinnell and Hughes, 2011). Goppe (2011) supports Darling’s work stating that a mentor is a allocated person who gives time and knowledge to helping a student learn and develop. The NMC (2010) state that at least 40% of a placement should be under the direct supervision of the allocated mentor.

In addressing the key concerns of teacher recruitment and retention, the GYO programs focus on the recruitment of community residents with roots in the local area, and focus on intensive mentoring of the program participants. Mentoring was found to be a key component of the programs with college level mentors helping program students achieve certification, and mentors in the schools helping them adjust to their new positions. By recruiting locally and focusing the teacher preparation programs on rural education, the evaluation concluded the GYO programs were highly supportive of key issues of recruitment and retention. Strong partnerships between the GYO programs and local school districts are also credited with helping both recruitment and mentoring of program students.

Due to Brian Tracy- an American author - to build a positive and productive mentoring program, one should bear in their mind that this is not a one-way relationship. Whether being in the position of a mentor or a mentee, there are few key points that might be useful in order to make the mentoring relationship successful.

Even though a mentor relationship would strengthen bonds of employees from different levels, the mentorship will not prepare new employees for what to expect. Therefore, I would advise the Alabama Public Radio to have orientation sessions in order to integrate the new employees. In these sessions, a more experienced employee in the same area of work would familiarize the new member of the norms and culture of the organization. They would help prepare the new employee with what to expect from their job and what is expected from them. This way the new employee can adjust to the new culture faster and

There are many benefits that come with mentoring such as working with special needs kids, making new friendships, working in a college atmosphere and teaching underclassmen different topics to help not only educate them but also guide them in right directions. The mentor program is very empowering to many people and eye opening. Not only are us the mentors teaching other kids important life lessons and such not, but we are as well learning important life lessons along the way that we will remember forever.

The New Teachers Mentoring is an outside organization designed to work with new teachers however; the program is not really implemented as it should be. The program has been in place for quite some time. The Sustainability Report was designed to establish a working relationship between the Mentor and Mentee with tools, structures, and ideas for working together effectively and to ensure the ultimate scale of stainability of the change of strategy. It is very important that this program is revised and reinstated to insure that teacher needs are met in and out of the classroom so that the retention rate is a thing of the past. The overall staff is mostly tenure teachers and there are many teachers that will soon retire

Establish appropriate behavior with the person you are mentoring so that the relationship doesn’t become one of complete co-dependence for them, as well as not becoming one of complete independence In which they shut you out.

This course has changed my outlook on mentoring and counseling students from being a therapist to a teacher. I have always known my struggles in middle school shape who I wanted to become as an adult; however, through this course I learn being an advocate for students needs may draw a line between being a teacher versus a counselor. As there are some lines a counselor may cross which will be unethical for a teacher. My experience of finding out why a student do what they do influence me to become overly involve in their life.

As soon as classes start we will also be attending as many classes as possible so that people come to our first informational. We plan on recruiting the high school students through their open house. We did this with the purpose of announcing the program in front of their parents, family members and teacher so that they help us to motivate them to show up. Since we plan on recruiting members earlier than usual next year we do plan on having a good portion of mentors however I hope that the ratio of mentors to mentees is the same so that we continue to have one to one peer mentoring. I think that they benefit more from the program when we dedicate the entire time to just one mentee rather than two or three.

In order for the experiment to be conducted appropriately, veteran teachers need to be open for personal growth in their profession. One way they can perform this growth, especially to implement and strength-based curriculum, teachers need to partake in multiple teacher training sessions or mentoring programs. These teacher trainings are different than traditional trainings model because both parties are growing throughout the process, where in traditional training, the mentor is the guide, supporter or advice giver. Ye He (2009), explains the strength-based mentoring is aligned with educative mentoring where both the mentors and mentees are engaged in continued professional growth. Ye He (2009) continues to share “In educative mentoring the learning of the mentors and mentees occurs through meaningful social communication, interactions and practice in reaching co-constructed goals” (p 269).

The focus of Mentoring Teachers Towards Excellence, our project is to lead through instructional improvement. We want to concentrate on the development of high-quality instruction for beginning teachers. I have learned a lot through the development and ongoing process of the project.

New teachers are paired with mentors, for instance they just hired a new 4th grade position this year. This teacher had a one year of teaching kindergarten but has been out of teaching for several years, and had no experience with 4th grade. Consequently, she was out of the loop with curriculum, and programs the school uses. This teacher has received tons of support, her mentor teacher was the other 4th grade teacher, and they would plan curriculum together every day after school. At the administrative level, Holt helped the new teacher understand the data systems like aspire, and log-ins for instructional programs for her and her students. Holt stressed daily contact, and support for new teachers in order for them to be successful.

With this information, schools gain a valuable resource in teachers who can mentor or coach peers. These accomplished teachers become an example of good teaching. Another valuable use of this evaluation tool is that it can be used to evaluate the skills of teachers for licensing candidacy, contract continuance, and affirmation of distinguished demonstration of teaching skills of experienced teachers. Using the tool for training teachers to mentor or coach and to evaluate teaching skills and responsibilities provides reliable evidence to ensure teacher quality. The ongoing use of this evaluation tool will also provide feedback and evidence of growth in the domains of teaching responsibilities.