ISSUES IN MENTORING NEW GRADUATE TEACHERS

Issues In Mentoring New Graduate Teachers

Issues In Mentoring New Graduate Teachers

Introduction

Serving as a experienced teacher for student teachers is a win-win situation. Cooperating teachers win because to truly serve as a experienced teacher as a mentor for a new student teacher they must critically rethink their teaching methods and strategies, thereby improving their teaching. They can also learn from the student teacher's accomplishments, failures, and feedback. In addition, many student teachers will bring with them new ideas for warm-ups, skill drills, and game activities that will add to the existing program. Student teachers win because, in a structured, real-life environment with the benefit of experienced guidance and feedback, they get the opportunity to apply and implement all the theory, philosophy, and methods concepts they have learned in three years of college. Perhaps the biggest winners are the students, as they have an extra pair of eyes and hands to help them(Zeichner and Tabachnick, 1982). The current study suggests that experienced teachers faces so many issues while mentoring new graduate teachers. This paper examines the issues faced by the experienced teachers while mentoring and supervise new graduate teachers in an early intervention reading programme.

Discussion

The personal and interpersonal qualities of mentoring is the process of a guide along a journey and recommended the following questions that mentors should ask themselves when considering a mentoring relationship: Where is the new student mentee heading in life? and Who am I as a experienced teacher as a mentor to the new student mentee in his or her efforts to reach his or her personal and professional goals? The story of experienced teacher as a mentor in The Odyssey serves as a cornerstone for Daloz's thoughts about mentoring. Experienced teacher as a mentor, the trusted friend of Odysseus, was given charge over Odysseus's son Telemakhos to help his son reunite with his father in a far-off world. Experienced teacher as a mentor encourages, guides, accompanies, and supports his trusted charge until Telemakhos finds his father(Calderhead, 1988). With regard to mentoring teachers, attention to skills and skill delivery are important. But what of the person of the new student mentee? With the shifting of emphasis from the interpersonal dimension of mentoring to external standards and student measurements, are we not in danger of losing the guide-sojourner-facilitator function of mentoring?

Issues Faced By Experienced Teachers

In recent years, mentors have struggled with attempts to address calls for them to demonstrate results within brief time periods (i.e., get clients better quickly and prove that they are better). Similarly, there is currently an emphasis in experienced teacher as a mentor implement state-mandated guidelines that are designed to show student improvement. Some problems cannot be addressed with brief, solution-focused techniques(Goldhammer, 1969). Individuals who are struggling with issues of self-identity and who are attempting to make meaning of their lives often do not respond to such brief, outcome-measured approaches. In a similar fashion, the novice teacher who is struggling with professional identity issues and is trying ...