An Administrator's Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring

By (author) William L. Fibkins

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 January 2011

Length of book:

272 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

ISBN-13: 9781607096788

This book address a major gap in the current mentoring programs at the secondary level. Staff development resources are often concentrated on helping new teachers be successful in their early school experience. Yes, a good idea, but a limited vision. Meanwhile many veteran teachers go without the mentoring assistance they need to be effective classroom teachers. While a few become mentors themselves, many veteran teachers just settle, slowly giving up, and become at risk of failure, burnout, and thinking only of retirement. This book is a call to school superintendents, building administrators, department chairs, school board members, union leaders, parent leaders, and teacher educators to address the need to provide ongoing mentoring for all teachers.

Chapter 1 1 The Pressing Need for Administrators to Take on a Mentoring Role
Chapter 2 2 A Vision of the Competent Master Teacher
Chapter 3 3 Characteristics of the Effective Mentor
Chapter 4 4 How Administrators Can Assess Their Mentoring Skills
Chapter 5 5 Selecting and Training the Mentoring Team
Chapter 6 6 The Mentoring Team in Action
Chapter 7 7 Utilizing Mentoring to Jump Start the No Teacher Left Behind Era
Chapter 8 8 Utilizing Mentoring to Provide a Second Act for Veteran Teachers
Chapter 9 9 Serving as a Mentor without a Formal Mentoring Program
Chapter 10 10 Making the Case for a Whole-School Mentoring Program

Dr. Bill Fibkins, a great educator, has trained and inspired scores of teachers and now he's done it again in this second edition. Bill's work emphasizes that no longer is it acceptable for teachers to merely teach content—they need to address the needs of the whole child, especially because so many children live chaotic lives. Novice teachers need to be trained with techniques and strategies focused on classroom management by veteran teachers armed with hard-earned experiences gained after many years in the classroom. A process that offers veteran teachers a new opportunity for professional growth. The student cannot succeed without the skilled teacher, of course, but neither can the teacher survive without the success of the student. They are in it together, both connected, and they are our future. Dr. Fibkin is providing us with the blueprint, and this must be required reading for those who want to see our schools succeed.