For well over a decade, teachers have been recognized as the single most important school-level factor influencing student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 2000; McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, & Hamilton, 2003; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2000; Rowan, Correnti & Miller, 2002; Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997). Tremendous public resources…

In the report "From Good to Great: Exemplary Teachers Share Perspectives on Increasing Teacher Effectiveness across the Career Continuum," (See full report in ERIC at ED555657) National and State Teachers of the Year shared their views on what helped them become great teachers. This accompanying "Discussion Starter Tool" builds…

Equipping youth with and without disabilities for the world of work has been the focus of ongoing legislative and policy initiatives. The authors examined the extent to which career development and vocational activities were available to and accessed by youth with severe disabilities or emotional and behavioral disorders attending 34 urban,…

Describes an inservice session that included informal lunch discussions with nonteachers who had experience relevant to the inservice topic. (MCG)

Reviews the literature on mentoring in organizations and discusses six guidelines for establishing such relationships. Implications for career counselors are given. (BL)

When it comes to teacher preparation, the support provided to new teachers, and ongoing professional development for working teachers, Grades K-12 and the field of early care and education (ECE) are two very different worlds. While both worlds assume that teachers' classroom skills and behavior can be influenced at multiple points in time (through…

In this paper, the authors view mentorship not as the traditional one-to-one relationship between mentor and mentee, but "from the next scale up" as a large systematic collection of mentor-mentee pairs. This concept, borrowed from the graphic arts and called "macro-mentorship," is adopted as a means for obtaining new insights…

This guide is meant to assist mentors and advisors in understanding how they might help students identify and respond to the challenges of becoming scientists or engineers. The guide--intended for faculty members, teachers, administrators, and others who advise and mentor students of science and engineering--attempts to summarize features that are…

Advises school business managers to employ administrative interns as extra hands to research potential programs and policies, develop fundraising activities, write newsletters, coordinate volunteer and community relations activities, and many other functions. Rationale and procedures for creating cost-effective mentoring or professional…

Two professors provide a duography of their former faculty-student relationship that confronted existing mentoring practices. They explore duography as an arts-based form of qualitative research to extend ways of thinking about and practicing the mentorship of graduate students. Duography is defined as a retrospective written account that two…

This report deals with teachers' professional development on the job within the context of teaching in schools. It links the quality of learning--and the opportunity to learn--to the quality of a teacher's capacity to know what to teach, how to teach, and to whom. Comments are made on the academic preparation of new teachers and the ways teachers…

Discusses the need of special education teachers for a mentor to help them through the critical first year of teaching students with special needs. The different reasons why special education teachers, in particular, need mentors are listed, along with the ways mentoring assistance could be provided. (Author/CR)

A professional development program for leadership, Coaching Leaders to Attain Student Success (CLASS), prepares individuals to coach new and experienced school principals. The program is the product of collaboration between the New Teacher Center at University of California Santa Cruz and the Association of California School Administrators. (MLF)

Mechanisms to foster and develop leadership skills among pharmacy's fastest growing demographic segment, women, must be cultivated now. Role-modeling, mentoring, and networking have worked well for men and lend themselves to women's sharing style of leadership. Formalized systems must be built and women faculty's access to resources assured. (MSE)

Discusses mentoring relationships for women in engineering. Advice and guideline include: (1) advantages (meeting new people, making career decisions, development as an employee); (2) disadvantages (overdependence, ethical disagreements, personal involvement); and (3) finding and using mentors. (DH)