Mid-year memorandum

Teaching Pre K-8, Jan 1999 by Cook, Jimmie

National mentor programs can guide new teachers on the path of becoming leaders.

To: Principal*s, any school

From: New teachers any school

Re: A counselor to Odysseus

Odysseus was King of Ithaca and a leader of the Greeks during the Trojan War. After the war, he wandered for 10 years before returning home.

That's how we received the word "odyssey." Many of us use it to describe our travels, a search for spiritualism or anything else that finds us wandering outside or inside our bodies and minds.

Odysseus didn't feel comfortable making decisions without input, so he developed a relationship with an individual named Mentor, a most trusted counselor. Odysseus consulted Mentor regarding major decisions. This treatise is concerned with mentor in the lower case.

Mentors and teachers. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "mentor" as "a wise and trusted counselor or teacher." Since you are both a counselor and teacher, the word mentor nominally applies to you, and a definition of the word "nominal" in the above dictionary is that it's "existing in name only and not in actuality."

As a general rule, new teachers are introduced to their classroom and left to drown in a miasma that often overwhelms them. These are teachers who could become productive and enrich the lives of students if a "mentor" advises and counsels them through the gnarly paths at the beginning of their careers.

We know it works. Extensive research has demonstrated numerous times that new teachers with mentors tend to stay with the profession and generally use what we often label as best practices. Why don't we mentor every new teacher? Some forward-looking principals are doing it in their individual schools, but by and large, it isn't done.

Business does it all the time. Mentors are a part of the schema. Most men and women in leadership roles often take on a younger employee and mentor him or her in the trials and tribulations of the business at hand.

It can be said with certainty that no business is more important than the education of young children. Yet, we lack the curiosity or courage to move into the fray and establish a national program of mentoring new teachers or more experienced ones who need to be reestablished in their "good teacher" mode.

In our own program at USCS, we have field experiences in every course in the professional education block. In fact, many of our methods courses are taught on-site at local elementary schools where students spend time discussing theory with a faculty member and then go immediately to a classroom to practice what they've just heard.

Of course we have the usual semester-long student teaching experience; still, our students tell us that they feel ill-prepared in their first ventures. They often tell us that they receive no assistance (spelled advice) from the principal or other colleagues and friends. That is a transgression to be forgiven only by rectifying the wrong and going boldly forth and sharing guidance with new faculty.

Common mistakes. Principals often make the mistake of asking experienced faculty to act as a mentor to new faculty and feel they have done their jobs. Sir Walter Scott opined thusly: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

He was referring to the deception we occasionally apply to others, but the quote is germane, because when we feel that just by asking a teacher to mentor another is sufficient, then we are deceiving no one but ourselves.

Mentoring requires more than a request. It demands that each school:

* Develop a set of guidelines about mentoring

* Set aside time so that mentor and mentee can meet for observation and counseling in order to prevent the burden from becoming onerous

* Require written records of meetings and recommendations

* Agree on just compensation for the serious time involved

Do not expect such labor intensity to flourish without reward. It's a process that can assuredly benefit the novice as he/she begins his/her career, but it also serves to renew experienced and accomplished teachers.

For those of you who have mentoring programs, I would like to know the details so that I might share the ingredients of your activities with our readership. We're all in this boat together, don't you think?

Jimmie Cook is Dean, School of Education, University of South Carolina at Spartanburg, and a Teaching Editor of Teaching K-8.