Mentoring for High Levels of Performance
Overview of Mentoring in the Renaissance Partnership
From the start-up of this five-year project, mentoring of
teacher candidates has been developed as a primary strategy to assist teacher
candidates achieve higher levels of performance. Two strong beliefs have driven the development of mentoring
among Renaissance project partners: a)
mentoring should involve the collective expertise of teacher educators, school
practitioners and arts & science faculty; and b) mentoring should be focused
on improving teacher candidate performance with respect to the seven processes
of the Renaissance Teacher Work Sample.
Involvement of the above three partner role groups have
been facilitated by the concept of “team mentoring”. While involvement of teacher educators, arts & science
faculty and school practitioners toward a focused goal of higher candidate
performance has been productive, establishing “mentoring teams” has been a
challenge that different project sites have approached using different
configurations of mentor role group involvement.
Also, how teacher education faculty, master teachers and academic content
faculty collectively assist teacher candidates with work samples has been
different for elementary, middle and high school teacher candidates.
As the Renaissance Teacher Work Samples have been developed
and implemented across partnership sites, the need for a consistent mentoring
framework and process became more evident.
Thus, over the past year a mentoring task force was charged with
collecting the best ideas from theory, research and wisdom of practice and
designing a mentoring manual specifically for teacher educators, school
practitioners and arts & science faculty in partnership with those who
assist teacher candidates with teacher work samples. In January of 2003, the mentoring task force presented their
draft of the “Renaissance Partnership Project Mentoring Manual:
Coaching Teacher Education Candidates through the Renaissance Teacher
Work Sample”. The draft
manual (described in more detail below) has been pilot tested in the spring of
2003 at three project sites and will be revised in June of 2003 for project-wide
use in the fall of 2003.
| Universities | Name | |
| California State University, Fresno | Jean Behrend | jean_behrend@csufresno.edu |
| Eastern Michigan University | Georgea Langer | georgea.langer@emich.edu |
| Emporia State University | Tes Mehring | mehringt@emporia.edu |
| Idaho State University | Julie Birdsong | birdjuli@isu.edu |
| Kentucky State University | Reginald Nnazor | rnnazor@gwmail.kysu.edu |
| Longwood University, Virginia | Jeremy Lloyd | jlloyd@longwood.edu |
| Millersville University, Pennsylvania | Lillie West | Lillie.West@millersville.edu |
| Middle Tennessee State University | Willis Means | hmeans@mtsu.edu |
| Southeast Missouri State University | Evelyn Lee | elee@semo.edu |
| University of Northern Iowa | Vickie Robinson | victoria.robinson@uni.edu |
| Western Kentucky University | Toby Daniel | tabitha.daniel@wku.edu |
The New Renaissance Partnership Project
Mentoring Manual
The June 2004 Renaissance Partnership Project
Mentoring Manual contains the following components. You can link to the entire
document and can be downloaded by clicking on this link. http://www.uni.edu/itq/TeamMentoring/mentoring_manual.doc.
Overview of the Renaissance Teacher Work Sample
The Renaissance Partnership Definition
Who are the mentors?
What do we mean by mentoring?
How will the teacher candidate benefit from mentoring?
What does a mentor do?
When is mentoring provided for the teacher candidate?
A conceptual framework for mentoring
Mentoring approach
Language and Communication Skills for Mentoring
Pausing
Probing
Paraphrasing
Positive presuppositions
Providing data and responses
Types of questions mentors can use
Common mentoring challenges in teacher work samples
Vignette addressing the reflection and evaluation challenge
Cases illustrating how teacher candidates have revised assessment plans after a mentoring session
Title: Mentoring
Structures and Processes that Produce High Levels of Performance in Teacher
Candidates
Authors: Julie Birdsong, Jack Newsome, Toby Daniel, Lillie West
Description: An overview of progress in the Renaissance Partnership
Project toward implementing mentoring programs that support teacher work sample
development, presented at AACTE in New Orleans in January, 2003
Number of slides: 45
Title: Team Mentoring at Millersville University: Teacher Educators Sharing Accountability with School Practitioners
and Arts and Science Faculty
Author:
Lillie West
Description:
Describes the structure and processes of the team mentoring programs
at Millersville University in Pennsylvania; presented at AACTE in New York in February, 2002
Number of slides: 15
Title: Team Mentoring and the Teacher Work Sample: Eastern Michigan University
Author:
Pat Pokay
Description:
Outlines the structure and processes used at Eastern Michigan to
develop and implement a team mentoring program; presented at AACTE in New York in February, 2002
Number of slides: 8
Title: WKU’s Teacher Preparation Mentoring Model
Authors:
Sam Evans and Tabitha Daniel
Description:
Describes the organization and structures of mentoring teams at
Western Kentucky University; presented at AACTE in New York in February, 2002
Number of slides: 15