Maximum Mentoring: An Action Guide for Teacher Trainers and Cooperating Teachers

"To be an effective mentor takes time and training. It requires a whole new set of skills. Maximum Mentoring offers an array of training strategies for mentors, and helps to codify what it means to be an effective mentor."
―From the Foreword by Ellen Moir, Executive Director
The New Teacher Center
University of California, Santa Cruz

What worries and activities did you think about most during your student teaching experience? What were your most consistent concerns? Your own experience as a student teacher is vital in the success of our next generation of teachers.

New teacher development requires intensive levels of one-to-one training and mentoring. Maximum Mentoring provides you, the mentor, with an action guide through the complexities of the school-based mentoring process to ensure maximum success for both mentor and mentee.

This excellent resource features:

• Step-by-step guidance for one-on-one mentoring and supervision of student teachers and novice teachers, including clear coverage of rules, roles, relationships, responsibilities, and procedures
• Hands-on essentials, such as reproducible forms, checklists, activities, answers to frequently asked questions, and reflective exercises for mentor and mentee
• Input on school-university supervisory partnerships
• Information on observation and feedback, formative assessment, summative evaluation, and professional growth and development
• Suggestions for working with struggling students and novice teachers

As a mentor, you provide leadership by guiding the classroom-based portion of student teachers′ professional education as well as collaborative opportunities for new teachers to explore and reflect on their practice in a safe setting. The purpose of this essential text is to provide support for you as you support future teacher development.

Gwen L. Rudney, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Minnesota, Morris. A teacher of language arts and social studies at the middle school level for more than a decade, her teaching and research interests include classroom processes, teacher development, multicultural education, and working with parents. She has worked with student teachers and cooperating teachers in regional, national, and international settings. She is coauthor of Maximum Mentoring: An Action Guide for Teacher Trainers and Cooperating Teachers. She enjoys serving as the chair of the Minnesota Teacher of the Year Program. In 2004, she received the University of Minnesota, Morris, Alumni Teaching Award.

Andrea M. Guillaume, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education at California State University, Fullerton. Her fields of interest include teacher cognition and devel-opment, and content area instruction. She works with practicing and prospective teachers through Professional Development Schools and through a teacher induction project. She may be reached via e-mail at aguillaume@fullerton.edu.