Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/mentoring-teachers...-a-partnership-in-learning/5014934/
Training advice is easy to find these days. Books, videos, workshops, and seminars are everywhere. But ask a university professor, CEO, or master teacher how they acquired the knowledge and skills to successfully perform their jobs and they will rarely say they were guided by traditional methods of instruction. Rather, today's leaders, whether in the boardroom or the classroom, point to inspiring mentors, who were pivotal influences in helping them recognize and develop their own capabilities to excel (Wall Street Journal, 2002).Within classroom settings, mentors can be the key to unlocking and developing teachers' talents. For many educators of young children, the very essence of teaching is a process of continual inquiry, discovery, and renewal. Yet, most teachers rarely have time in their daily teaching to reflect upon what happens in their classrooms, document their work, or study their own teaching practices. Through regular observations and discussions with a skilled mentor, teachers can begin to refine teaching practices, acquire new competencies, gain insight, and become more confident and effective educators.
Mentors can counter the pull of comfortable and ingrained classroom routines by helping teachers analyze and examine the tacit understandings that have developed around familiar practices (Terell, Klein, Jewett, 1998). ...