Mentoring Teachers Toward Excellence: Supporting and Developing Highly Qualified Teachers

"A picture of how teachers canlearn to challenge one anotherto reach standards of excellencein their work"
—from the Foreword by Sharon Feiman-Nemser,Brandeis University

Mentoring Teachers Toward Excellence offers thirteen succinct cases of teachers who are going through the National Board Certification process. Each case highlights common challenges encountered in teacher mentoring relationships, such as working toward a vision of accomplished practice, maintaining personal and professional boundaries, working through personality conflicts, defusing negative group dynamics, providing constructive criticism, and more. These cases include the thoughts and feelings of the practitioner-writers as they describe each set of events, and are rich with detail and dialogue about the challenges encountered. Each case is accompanied by commentaries from educators who provide different perspectives on the dilemmas presented in the cases and teaching notes that analyze the central issues of the case. All of these compelling narratives provide the vicarious experience of walking in another's shoes and engaging in self-reflection. In group discussions, the cases are especially powerful, eliciting differing points of view to be aired and examined. For that reason, they are consciously designed to provoke discussion that is engaging, demanding, and intellectually exciting.

Every year, more than 15,000 teachers vie for the chance to become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Although the process is voluntary, National Board Certification is a widely recognized mark of distinction and is increasingly tied to leadership opportunities for teachers, salary increases, and improved student learning in classrooms. Mentors provide supportive services for teachers during their candidacy, offering strategies for standards-based analysis of practice, constructive criticism, advice, and moral support. These mentor groups have grown from informal groups to organized networks of expert teachers in every region of the country. Mentoring Teachers Toward Excellence is the first book to document the common challenges facing these "support providers," presenting a variety of brief cases of typical mentoring dilemmas in both one-on-one and group settings.

Judith H. Shulman is director of the Institute for Case Development and the National Board Support Network at WestEd, where she conducts professional development and technical assistance that facilitate quality teacher instruction.

Mistilina Sato, a former teacher, is an assistant professor of teacher development and science education at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and former director of the National Board Resource Center at Stanford University.