Mentors in the Making

Developing New Leaders for New Teachers

In response to a growing interest in mentoring and new teacher induction, the authors offer a unique view of developing quality mentors. Drawing on empirical research, practitioner action inquiry, and field-tested practices from induction programs, they explore effective mentoring in diverse educational contexts. With richly contextualized and thoughtfully analyzed excerpts from actual mentoring conversations and powerful examples of practice, the volume offers educators, researchers, and policymakers a reform-minded vision of the future of mentoring. Challenging conventional wisdom, this essential resource:

• Argues that mentors are not born, but developed through conscious, deliberate, ongoing learning.
• Provides a needed link between research and practice in the field of new teacher mentoring, to define a knowledge base for effective mentoring.
• Documents induction and mentoring practices that focus new teachers on individual learners, equity-oriented curriculum and pedagogy, and the educator’s role in reforming school culture.
• Highlights problems and complexities of enacting mentor knowledge and learning in diverse contexts

“Mentors in the Making dispels the myth that mentoring comes naturally to experienced teachers. It details a serious knowledge base for mentor teachers and offers a powerful vision of ambitious mentoring.”
—Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education, Brandeis University

“The authors present a powerful case illuminating the challenges, complexities, and promising practices of highly effective mentoring programs. This is the reference book for anyone concerned about a vision of the possible and the real future of mentoring teachers.”
—Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“This impressive book has done for mentoring what decades of research have done for classroom teaching—shown us the complexities of the work and the depth of knowledge and skill required to do it well.  Here is an important, practical guide for any district, school, organization, or individual concerned with making mentoring truly matter.”
—Judith Warren Little, Carol Liu Professor of Education Policy, University of California, Berkeley

“In this volume you will find new understandings about the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed by mentors and induction leaders who will transform a new generation of educators.”
—From the Foreword by Ellen Moir, Executive Director, The New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz