Why would we assume that persons who have never received the support of a mentor would still value what mentoring can accomplish. That is not a logical assumption but it is one that is often made and often left unexamined. If that assumption were true many administrators and Board of Education members would be supporters of new teacher induction and those programs would be far more prevalent than they are.

The Solution:

If we want decision makers to really support mentoring, we need to help them discover the value of mentoring. Strategies described in section #1 above will help, but until a person experiences the support of a mentor, their own support of mentoring is superficial and only theoretical. When cost cuts have to be made those areas for which there is no deeper, personal understanding of value will be cut. This ultimately means that we need to provide mentoring to administrators, when they are new, and when they are experiencing change to a new building or new district. We need to provide mentoring to new central office administrators and to new board of education members.

Anytime a new person or a new responsibility is assumed a mentoring process should be created and supported. This extends to when people are ready to retire as well. Someone who is experienced in the process should be provided to walk with the new person as they go through the experience. If we want our employees to succeed, we need to create the conditions for success. When a new administrator or new Board member has benefited from mentoring they understand personally why providing mentor support to new teachers is an investment that is critical to support.

So often educators are struggling with multiple innovations which have been presented to them in a fragmented and unrelated way. If mentoring is perceived as a single initiative with no relationship to other goals or organizational goals, then some day that mentoring program will be "at-risk". In the world of public education (and many other settings as well) the scarce resources, inadequate time, and press on good people for their time will all create a competition, and that competition means there will be winners and losers. For all three reasons mentioned in this paper, mentoring is often the loser at budget crunch time.

The Solution:

Link mentoring to peer coaching. Design your mentoring program to be the first staff development step in a career long process of professional growth. Design the new teacher seminars or staff development required of new teachers in your induction program to meet other organizational goals as well as new teacher needs. Examples include getting new teachers up to speed with your district's on-going initiatives such as cooperative learning, dimensions of Learning", or "critical thinking skills".

Help new teachers to understand and succeed with the curriculum by providing a day during orientation week during which a session is led by a teacher who experienced with that curriculum. The focus should not be on details, but rather should be the big picture, major concepts and strategies, and on pacing through out the school year. if you want new teachers to contribute to a school-wide effort focused on SIP goals, decide what you can do to specifically help new teachers to do that. What can be done during new teacher staff development? During mentoring meetings? During new teacher support groups? See the attached page titled "Relationships..." for suggested connections to reinforce.

One other perspective to consider under this category is the sharing of resources and other opportunities. For example, If you are planning to provide peer coaching training to a new group of mentors this fall, why not open it up to experienced mentors with no current protege assignment? They will benefit by keeping their skills current. Why not open it up to any experienced teachers who want to improve their teaching? It will help those who are not mentor program participants to experience the value of one aspect of mentoring and to interact with person in the mentoring program about what they have experienced and come to value.

Programs need to be sustained in the mind of each individual program participant and well as in the mind of district decision makers. it is true that decision makers can kill or keep a whole program in one swoop, but dissatisfaction in the minds of program participants can kill a program just as surely. Even though it may take a little longer, your program can die.

"Support" means that people have the tools, equipment, strategies, understanding, and skills they need to succeed at the job they are asked to perform. When people do not have what they perceive they rightly need to do the work expected, they will sometimes persist and sometimes give up really trying and just do the minimum.

The Solution:

Provide people with the things they need to do the job, or do not ask them to do it. Provide initial and on-going training and support. Provide it in both group settings, such as in a mentor peer support group, and individually, such as through the support of a Mentor Program Coordinator or Lead Mentor who can assume the role of a "Mentor of Mentors".

The mentoring pair need time to plan, to create materials, solve problems, etc. This time is critical so that mentors may model the thinking, analysis, problem solving, and decision making strategies that excellent teachers use. When new teachers can experience and discuss these strategies, their professional thinking skills are increased and their professional growth is accelerated. Even id mentors have no formal coaching role in your program, the mentoring pair need time to accomplish this work. I recommend a 1/2 day every other month be provided the pair.

If the role of mentor includes coaching provide even more time. The observation of teaching by both mentor and protege is critical if they are to improve teaching, and the conference time after the observation is vital as well. If coaching is added to mentoring, I recommend a 1/2 day each month except December and June be provided to the mentoring pair to accomplish this purpose.

If you only rely on grants to fund your program, the money is only temporary, and you risk creating an attitude in the district that mentoring is a "frill" or a nicety that can only be afforded when we can find the money. If you use only district resources to support your program, you may be unable to grow the program and incorporate better program practices, better training, increased stipends or formal recognition, etc. as your program evaluation suggests you need.

The Solution

Do your "homework". Research the needs of beginning teachers and the potential impact on retention of new teachers and improvement of teaching and student learning related to induction programs. Look into both the literature and into your local setting to define the needs. Find out your own district's teacher retention rate. How many new teachers leave after the first year, second year, etc.? Find out your own district's investment in new teachers, considering costs of recruitment, orientation, training, principal time, etc. Calculate the "return on investment" that can be gained by an quality induction program that cuts teacher attrition in half, by 3/4, to zero. Then check with other programs to see what they have been able to show for results and to what they attribute the results.

Seek district funding as the "core" resource to support your program. If you have done your homework this may be sufficient to get you started with the program or program changes you seek. However, as you seek district funds, frame your proposal as an experiment and state clearly what you expect to accomplish and in how much time. If you have done your homework, you will not over or under commit. Agree to be held accountable for results. Agree to (and ask for the time to) assess the effectiveness of the program.

If the district will not fund the program you need, use grant funding to initiate a new program entirely, or to begin new components to your existing program. Write a time line into the grant proposals you submit, describing how long the grant is sought for and what the district will do to assume a greater share of the support once the "pilot"can be assessed to demonstrate the results attained. Then make sure that this is OK with the district. Your basic approach is "I'm going to use grant funding to assume the risks and prove the value and benefits to the district. Once the value is demonstrated to the district , the district should assume the bulk of the support for the program."

Get more pointers from Barry Sweeny's paper on "How to Write Successful Grants".

Isn't it true that the time we need provide quality educational processes is in direct competition with the very time we need to do to improve those processes!? In other words, we are so busy doing our induction and mentoring program that we don't have the time to evaluate the program for ways to improve what we are doing. As true as this is, this situation may become a fatal flaw. If we do not collect and use data about what we do to improve what we do, we may not be allowed to continue doing it. After all, what educational decision maker would allow a program to continue that can not demonstrate that it is accomplishing what it is intended to accomplish? Add to this problem that most of us do not count program assessment and evaluation as one of our strengths.

The Solution:

Sorry, there is no easy solution. Just as we are really struggling to more conduct effective student assessment, and school improvement processes, so we must struggle and learn how to conduct and use better program assessment. Simply stated, you must be able to demonstrate the impact of your program if you expect decision makers to continue to support your work. Also, do not wait for them to ask for the data, prepare the processes and data and report on results before they ask for it. There are four aspects of this task:

A. Improving student learning is almost always the real reason for change initiatives in education. Yet, student learning is the last link in a long chain of events that are each necessary to attain improved student learning. Earlier links in the chain include curriculum that is aligned to the standards, assessment that is aligned to the curriculum, teachers who have the skills to teach that curriculum, teachers who actually teach the aligned curriculum, sufficient materials and technologies to support effective aligned instruction, students who assume responsibility for their own learning, etc. Before we can expect the last link in the chain to be in place, we understand that every other link must first be there.

B. Program assessment must provide the data we need, not just about the last link in the chain (student learning), but about every link in the chain. We need to know the current situation with each link and then we need to monitor the progress in getting each link in the chain in place and functioning effectively. For example, What data could tell you the amount of time needed for mentoring to be effective for most proteges? How could you collect that data? OR, What data could tell you the optimal number of coaching cycles needed for a mentoring pair to begin to positively impact their teaching behaviors? How could you collect that data?

C. We need to identify and collect data on early indicators of progress, those earlier links in the chain. Early indicators are those which will be among the first things to change when improvements are put in place. For example, when a middle school goes to team-based structures, one of the first things to indicate that the change is starting is that student and teacher attendance improves. Conversely, one of the last things to change will be student learning, the real purpose for the original change to an effective middle school structure. It may take several years for all the necessary links to be put in place to where teachers are providing improved instruction and, finally, student learning begins to visibly improve. If we watch for improved student learning early on in the process, we may wrongly conclude that "nothing is happening". Watch the early indicators early in the process and only expect the later indicators to change when the early indicators are all strong.

D. When all the early indicators are strong, we can assume that all the things necessary for student learning to improve are in place. Then it is reasonable and time to expect that student learning should begin to improve. Improving student learning is a developmental process, just like gardening. We cannot expect the harvest until all the prior steps in the process have had time to happen. In development, you can not plant the seeds and then harvest the crop. This is why time is so critical in development.

In mentoring and induction, the earlier indicators are vast. To understand what should be assessed, make a list of the sequence that you think must occur to get all the links in the chain of effective mentoring programs and practices in place. In other words, what are the necessary steps for beginning teachers to become effective teachers? (if that is the ultimate goal of mentoring and induction) After you have created that list, decide what data could be collected about each step in that process. What data will tell you the strength of each link in the chain?

Then you need a schedule that spells out when that data should be collected. That is, what are the indicators (links in the chain). Data for every indicator should be initially collected to give you a baseline against which to measure for tracking progress. Once you have a baseline, predict the points at which (specifically when) you should begin to see some of the earlier and later indicators change. Collect the data before the change is expected, when it is expected, and after it is expected. You "bracket" the expected time because you can not assume that your prediction will be correct, and you want the data to tell you when the changes started to happen.

Keep in mind that you are not collecting data just to show that the desired early and later changes have occurred. If that is all that you do, you may not learn enough to be able to sustain the changes. You also what to understand when and (if possible) why the changes occurred so that you know what caused the changes. That places you in a much more proactive position. In other words, your goal should not just be to improve student learning. Your goal should be to learn how to conduct an induction program that causes improved teaching and student learning.