Daily archives: September 16, 2015

Principal Mentoring: A Safe, Simple, and Supportive Approach. Carl Weingartner

Although “Principal Mentoring: A Safe, Simple, and Supportive Approach” is written to help school districts set up a mentorship program for school-based administrators, it has valuable information for a teacher mentorship program as well. 

This book contains simple steps that could be used to implement a mentorship program. It offers suggestions on how to be an effective mentor and briefly touches on the differences between mentoring and coaching. It provides sample mentor application forms and survey questions that could be used to evaluate the program. Specifically, it discusses accountability to justify continued funding for a mentorship program.

This book is based on a program that was implemented in New Mexico so many of the issues raised not applicable to the BC public school setting. For example, there is discussion on the “No Child Let Behind” policy and, in addition, discussion on the issues around recruitment and retention of school-based administrators. Although interesting, it is not relevant to the context of the BC public education system.

A Sense of Belonging, Sustaining and Retaining New Teachers. Jennifer Allen

Useful for learning strategies around: fostering relationships with new teachers, starting before school even begins; creating learning environments for new teachers to be reflective practitioners; coaching new teachers in their classrooms and providing opportunities for them to observe their peers in action; supporting new teachers beyond their first year through gradual release of support over their first several years in the classroom; and facilitating professional development opportunities where new and veteran teachers learn alongside one another.