Mentor Texts In Education

I teach fourth grade language arts where my main focus is to prepare my students to write a personal narrative for the Nebraska State Writing Test in January. Reading and writing are intertwined in my area of professional responsibility as I motivate my students to write a well-organized, creative personal narrative. As I have taught writing, I have found reading, writing, speaking, and listening go hand in hand when composing a personal narrative (Bruning, 2011, p. 299).

Criminologist James Fox of Northeastern University predicts that murders committed by teens will skyrocket as the population of kids 10 and under is higher than population of 21st century teens by 20%. (Stephens) Mentoring is the act of helping out someone that isn't as knowledgeable or experienced in different areas. The goal is to make them leaders. (Patterson)

In the article “Best Practices in Teaching Writing”, Charles Whitaker outlines eight points on helping students succeed as writers. The first

This entails working on the Seven Steps to Writing Success will be taught twice a week and writing tasks will also be included during literacy groups. Sizzling Starts and recounts will be the focus text in term one. Narrative and creative writing will be taught too and in both cases the emphasis will be on creating strong sentences with good structure. The lesson format for sizzling starts and narrative/creative writing will be explicit teaching to the whole class. My role as a teacher will be to identify the student’s level and provide appropriate feedback to support to move students toward the next level.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

The Closing Bell Speaker Series “Iron Sharpens Iron”: Why Mentoring Matters So Much was presented by Forest Harper. Forest Harper is the current Chief Executive Officer and President of INROADS Inc. Harper grew up in a poor neighborhood in Fort Pierce, Florida. In high school, Harper was a star athlete in his high school’s Army ROTC program. He attended Morgan State University on a football scholarship. His plan was to become a professional football player. He suffered two knee injuries that ended his football career. He graduated from Morgan State University with a Bachelors of Arts in Social Work. After graduation, he joined the Army and served as a Lieutenant. He spent six years in the Army and rose up to the position of Captain. After the Army, Harper participated in the Executive Leadership Training program at Harvard University. Before becoming the president of INROADS, Harper worked at Pfizer for twenty-eight years. He started as a pharmaceutical sales representative and later became the Vice President of Capability Development in Worldwide Public Affairs and Policy. He was the only African American in his division. This fact inspired him to join INROADS and become a mentor to minority college student. His goal is to help get as many minority college students into the industry they choose. Harper’s own mentor is his uncle Walter Crenshaw, the oldest documented Tuskegee Airman.

His writer’s notebook is full of stories and moments he has collected over time. He started the year by taking an idea and writing a summary of the events. He has started to use a variety of structures to share his ideas. During the memoir unit he wrote a piece about moving from Florida to New York. In this piece, he utilized feedback by adding internal thinking and figurative language. Going forward, Nicholas can use the collecting phase of the writing process to write longer and in more varied ways about any idea he has so that as he moves on to drafting actual pieces he has more content with which to work. Mentor texts can help him structure his ideas and support the revision process.  As we approach and revisit units, a critical goal is for Nicholas to transfer his writing skills across the day, applying them in all

Woullard, R., & Coats, L.T. (2004). The community college role in preparing future teaches: The impact of mentoring program for preservice teachers. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28, 609-624.

On the other hand, writing on topics that fascinate and intrigue me, is rather enjoyable than feeling like a chore. Ideas stream and words flow naturally without having to mimic and echo others voice. A literacy narrative is a piece of text written from my own perspective for the intermediate English composition class. A literacy narrative is an essay about my writing and reading literacy, looking back to various incidents with a brand new outlook. Writing this essay allowed me to revisit and assess highlights that contributed to my writing and reading literacy. The main goal of literacy narrative essay is to define literacy, discuss my own personal literacy rituals leading to how my literacy formalized every step of the way. In general, the

There have been many literary sponsors throughout my life that have helped me acquire valuable skills that I use in my college writing. My unique skillset is a result of my experiences and sponsors. In this class I hope to learn and practice new writing strategies.

Mentors are not only beneficial to the academic side of teenagers’ lives, but also to their personal life, such as their confidence and communication skills. Mentoring programs can also help change a student’s attitude, interpersonal relationships, healthier lifestyle choices and sometimes behavioral issues (as in violence). “Mentees in the BBBS program were 32 percent less likely to report having hit someone over the past year than the young people without mentors found that four mentoring programs showed reductions of some behaviors related to delinquency and negative behaviors, but did not eliminate all delinquent behaviors.” (Benefits for Young People 3) A study done by the Casey Institute showed that when youth were asked whether or not they agreed with the statement “I can do just about anything I put my mind to,” the youths with mentors were more likely to agree than those without a mentor.

3. The writer uses narrative literacy as he/she believes that the use of narrative literacy in classrooms will help enable students to be encouraged to explore the English language as well as student also become more engaged in lessons.

Mentorship is very important in the workplace especially in the area of training and development. The mentor-protégé relationship is a much needed relationship that begins in the early career stage and this relationship involves the current or new employees and the supervisor or other colleagues that provide work-related guidance. The relationship itself is comprehensive and involves “educational, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual development” (Greenhaus,, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2010, p 211). One of the initial task of the early career the establishment of the career field which involves the gaining of the workplace competence, learn what is needed to excel in the organization, and to gain acceptance in the workplace to be recognized as the valued employee. There are many ways of achieving the above mentioned advantages in the workplace which one main method is through the use of the mentorship program.

With the development of the more organic and less formal organisational structures the role of mentors has shifted with these changes. Unlike previously where mentors where seen as formal trainers who taught newcomers the processes and got them acquainted with the cultures and the systems within the organisation. Which required good interpersonal skills and a good knowledge of the activity or tasks the mentee would have to undertake, and be able to effectively relay or demonstrate the tasks or activities to the mentee. As opposed to more recently where a mentor would have to be more of an emotional counselor and demonstrate more skills than were traditionally required from

As part of my introduction, I would like to mention that my research project is about mentoring where I have chosen ‘questioning’ as my strategy. In this report, I will discuss in detail about my ‘Mentoring through Questioning’, which is a key for my research project report. Here, I will cover the project’s context in which it was set, my aims and focus of the project, my justification on why I have chosen mentoring through questioning and the types of questions being used during this project, in support of the relevant literature. And then eventually, I will mention about the interactive sessions between a mentor and mentee, the reflection or the perspectives, specifying the self-analysis as well as the required feedback from mentee as part of the research strategy. Later, I will conclude this report by mentioning about the effectiveness of mentoring sessions and the future actions planned for my skills development.