New Teacher Orientation

It was interesting to hear everyone talk about their district mentoring programs. It seems that the majority of them were ineffective. The ones that were discussed (Canton and Iowa) that were intense seemed to have certain things in common. The mentors and mentees were paid a stipend and there were specific days and times for them to get together. The idea of a mentoring program is great, however, the program must be run effectively. One area that may need to be worked on is the pairing of the mentor and mentee. In our district they may be people who do not teach the same grade level or same subject as the mentee. Our middle school is currently designed by teams that meet on a daily basis. To me, it would be effective to have the mentor and mentee be on the same team or at least the same grade level and subject area. There are many situations where the mentee has had to depend on another person to ask questions of because the mentor was unavailable or did not know the answer because they taught different subjects / grades. Another area that could improve would be who goes through the mentoring program. A first year teacher will probably need a much different program than an experienced teacher who is new to the district. Having these groups together for some sessions is helpful but the needs of each as far as classroom management, etc. is quite different. As a first year employee in my district, I went through the mentoring program along with first year and experienced teachers. It was somewhat disappointing to me because the majority of the topics discussed did not even relate to my job as a counselor. The teachers also recieved CPDU credit, which as a school counselor, I did not need. As future administrators we need to take a look at what we can do to improve mentoring programs as I believe the consensus was that they can be effective when done "correctly".