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"All intelligent evaluations look to the long term consequences of an action, never to the short."

MCC Mentor Training

Objective:

One Voice - New staff receive hands-on training in management, social skills and academic curriculum from one mentor, ensuring that the trainee receives direction, evaluation and feedback from a single primary source. This implies that all other staff, regardless of the profundity of their insights, pass their concerns, suggestions etc. on to the mentor rather than sharing directly with the trainee.

Purpose:

  1. To acquaint new teachers with their roles and responsibilities and what elements the job entails.
  2. To evaluate the strengths and limitations of new teachers so as to focus our training energies where they are needed.

Resource materials:

  1. natural science curriculum
  2. management observation sheet
  3. social skills curriculum
  4. gross motor curriculum
  5. academic teaching objective

General procedures:

  1. Pair new teachers with seasoned teachers in order to observe specific roles they perform.
  2. Have new teachers analyze and evaluate specific roles of seasoned teachers.
  3. Have seasoned teachers slowly feed new teachers into activities during the day.
  4. Increase the number of specific activities new teachers will perform and continue to feed back to them on their performance.

Procedures:

  1. Mentor assigns readings (see 1-5 above) and follows up with evaluation of trainee's grasp of salient features of each, with major emphasis on management strategies and social skills curriculum.
  2. Mentor assigns trainee to observe target group with specific focus on management observation sheet and social skill spotting and recording procedures. This can be done in one of two ways:
  1. Mentor and trainee observe a skilled teacher together.
  2. Trainee observes mentor directly.
  1. Mentor evaluates effectiveness of trainees observations and discusses advantages and problems of various strategies employed by observed teacher.
  2. Mentor assigns trainee to sit in curriculum planning meetings with future co-teacher(s).
  3. Mentor makes office scheduler aware of their needs.
  4. Mentor should spend 2 hours of observation time for each 1 hour of discussion.
  5. Mentor assigns specific activities for trainee to implement (i.e. one gross motor, one art, one lunch, etc.) and sets up time, as immediate as possible, to give feedback on.
  6. Mentor assigns increasing number of daily activities, observes and provides feedback on each.
  7. Mentor feeds back number and frequency of observations/discussions as progress of trainee warrants, but keeps weekly formal contact with trainee plus frequent informal observations and contact.
  8. Other teachers increasingly become resources for new teacher, but they share any serious concerns with her mentor rather than with trainee directly.
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