Description

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Designed for mentors, administrators, and teacher educators, Mentoring Across Boundaries builds on the foundations of the authors' previous book, Mentoring Beginning Teachers, to explore many of the specific issues that impact the mentoring relationship.

While there are general mentoring strategies that apply to nearly all programs, the success of any individual mentoring situation is affected by the relationship between mentor and mentee, the school environment, the mentee's stage of career, and other influences.

Among the issues the authors explore are:
age, gender, and culture in the mentoring relationship;
new teachers in urban or rural school environments;
veteran teachers moving across buildings or into a new school;
teachers working with at-risk students;
mentoring “burned-out” teachers;
self-mentoring;
working with struggling teachers;
mentoring through technology.

The most recent report from the National Commission on Teacher and America's Future states that “The conventional wisdom is that we can't find enough good teachers. The truth is that we can't keep enough good teachers.” Mentoring has proven one of the most effective ways to keep teachers in the field. With Mentoring Across Boundaries in hand, mentors and administrators will find the guidance they need to navigate many of the rough spots that have the potential to derail successful mentoring.

About the Author

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Jean Boreen is a Professor of English education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she regularly teaches secondary methods courses on young adult literature and teaching literature in secondary schools.

Jean came from a family of teachers, so following in those footsteps was a logical choice. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Iowa State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She taught grades seven through twelve in Virginia and Iowa and at a community college in northern Virginia.

After twenty years of teaching in public schools,
Donna Niday now serves as an associate professor of English at Iowa State University where she directs the first-year writing program, supervises student teachers, and teaches young adult literature and methods courses.

Her interest in mentoring began when, as the president of the Iowa Council Teachers of English, she initiated a statewide pilot mentoring program for first-year English teachers.

Mary K. Johnson, a veteran secondary and university educator, has taught English and ESL courses in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Papua New Guinea. She now lives, writes, and teaches on Guam.