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Becoming a High-Performance Mentor

A Guide to Reflection and Action

By: James B. Rowley

Ensure a rewarding and productive mentoring experience!

High-performance mentors are not born. Even experienced educators need training in order to provide constructive support to entry-year teachers. James B. Rowley's mentoring framework has been used to successfully train thousands of teachers to acquire the essential behaviors of high-performance mentoring. With more than 20 years' experience in training mentor teachers, Rowley blends real-life stories with established research to help readers:

Understand mentoring as a performance continuum
Improve assessment, communication, and coaching skills
Reflect on the mentoring process and analyze mentoring relationships
Utilize mentoring as a pathway to personal and professional growth

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Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412917674
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2006
Page Count: 208
Publication date: June 21, 2006

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Author(s) Table of Contents Reviews

Description

"I serve as a mentor principal, but I didn't receive much training in the how to's of being a mentor. I wish I had read this book years ago!"
-Becky Cooke, Principal
Evergreen Elementary, Spokane, WA

"I recommend this book highly to mentor program coordinators who are looking to refine the training and practice of their existing mentors. It goes deeper into the process of mentoring and reflection."
-Audrey Lakin, Teacher Induction and Mentoring Coordinator
Community Unit School District #300, Carpentersville, IL

Ensure a rewarding and productive mentoring experience!

High-performance mentors are not born. Even experienced educators need training in order to provide constructive support to entry-year teachers. James B. Rowley's mentoring framework has been used to successfully train thousands of teachers to acquire the six essential behaviors of high-performance mentoring: committing, accepting, communicating, coaching, learning, and inspiring.

With more than twenty years of experience in training mentor teachers, Rowley blends real-life stories with established research to help readers:

Understand mentoring as a performance continuum with escalating developmental stages
Improve assessment, communication, and coaching skills
Reflect on the mentoring process and analyze mentoring relationships
Utilize mentoring as a pathway to personal and professional growth

Designed for experienced and novice mentor teachers, this book will also be an enormously useful resource for mentor program coordinators, trainers, staff developers, and principals who want to assure that participants grow in their teaching practice as a result of the mentoring experience.

Key features

Contains questions to stimulate mentor reflection and action at the conclusion of every chapter
Explores mentor performance as a continuum from low performing to high performing.
Helps to hone the skills and knowledge of experienced mentors
Includes a mentor teacher beliefs inventory

Author(s)

James B. Rowley

James B. Rowley is the James Leary Professor in the School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton and the executive director of the Institute for Technology-Enhanced Learning.

Over the past 20 years, he has focused his scholarship on the training and support of mentors and beginning teachers and has served as an entry-year program consultant and mentor teacher trainer for over 100 school districts. He is also the co-creator of other multimedia training programs, including Recruiting and Training Successful Substitute Teachers (1998), Becoming a Star Urban Teacher (1995), and Mentoring the New Teacher (1994).

In addition to the multimedia publications listed above, Rowley is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs. He is the author of the Corwin Press book Becoming a High-Performance Mentor: A Guide to Reflection and Action (2006). Rowley has delivered over 200 presentations at professional conferences and has led training programs throughout the United States. In 1993 and 995, he was the recipient of the National Association of Teacher Educator’s annual award for Distinguished Research in Teacher Education. In 1985, he was selected as a national semi-finalist in the NASA’s Teacher in Space program and competed for the chance to be the first private citizen in space. He earned his doctorate in educational policy and leadership from The Ohio State University.

List of Tables and Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1. Introduction

Many Right Ways

Depends on What?

A Framework for Reflection and Self-Assessment

2. Mentoring

Low- to High-Performance Mentoring

Quality Mentoring as Quality Conversation

Good Mentoring as Good Teaching

Mentoring as Pathway to Personal Growth

The Development of the Mentoring Relationship

Questions for Reflection on Mentoring

3. Committing

Commitment and Influence

Causes of Low Mentor Commitment

Low Mentee Commitment

Commitment Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Committing

4. Accepting

The Challenge of Acceptance

Relationship of Acceptance and Understanding

Acceptance Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Accepting

5. Communicating

A Conversation Revisited

Developmental Mentoring

Beliefs Influence Practice

The Mentor Teacher Beliefs Inventory

From Theory to Practice

To Guide or Not to Guide

Communication Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Communicating

6. Coaching

Relationship of Mentoring to Coaching

Cognitive Coaching

Coaching for Confidence and Competence

Coaching as Cognitive Apprenticeship

The Role of Observation in Coaching

Coaching Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Coaching

7. Learning

Embracing New Ideas

Open to New Behaviors

Formal and Informal Teacher Learning

A Framework for Teacher Learning

Learning Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Learning

8. Inspiring

Personal Reflections on Inspiration

Inspiration Indicators

Questions for Reflection on Inspiring

References

Index

Reviews

"I recommend this book to mentor program coordinators who are looking to refine the training and practice of their existing mentors. It goes deeper into the process of mentoring and reflection."

Audrey Lakin, Teacher Induction and Mentoring Coordinator
Community Unit School District #300, Carpentersville, IL

"Rowley offers substance for mentors who have already been through initial training and who now have some experience. It's also a good book for experienced mentors to use as a 'tune up' for their mentoring skills."

Tom Ganser, Director, Office of Field Experiences
University of Wisconsin

"This is a fabulous book! I serve as a mentor principal, but I didn't receive much training in the how-to's of being a mentor. I wish I had read this book years ago!"

Becky Cooke, Principal
Evergreen Elementary School, Spokane, WA

"Rowley speaks with authority and integrity—authority from the perspective of being a mentor to mentors and integrity because he speaks from experience."

Lois Brown Easton, Educational Consultant and Author

"The author writes with great honesty and openness to provide wonderful information about mentoring processes and tools while providing a resource rich in reflective questions surrounded by thoughtful and meaningful quotes. A wonderful and helpful resource for all principals and mentors!"

Kathryn Kee, Leadership Coach
Past President, National Staff Development Council

"Reading this book can be energizing, given the wide-ranging ideas and experiences that have been collected by the author during years of teaching and conducting mentor training workshops across the country. The examples feel authentic and the information provided has a 'that-makes-sense' ring to it."

PsycCRITIQUES, May 2007

"The book's how-to approach makes it very straightforward, and Rowley uses appropriate examples to illustrate the various points being made or skills being presented."

Teaching Theology & Religion, April 2008, Vol. 11(2)