Mentoring and the Reading Curriculum.

Mentors need to be carefully selected to assist new teachers in making a successful transition from student teaching to being fully licensed and certified to teach in the regular classroom. During the school year, the mentor may help the new teacher in a variety of ways--one is to build confidence in the new teacher for teaching and another is to aid in improving reading instruction. Presently, there is much pressure placed upon teachers to produce high test scores, especially in reading. Issues of how reading should be taught--phonics or whole language--are paramount, and the mentor can assist the beginning teacher to examine and understand the beliefs behind each of the different plans of teaching reading. Mentors need to have many qualities to guide new teachers to achieve as much as possible and then for the teacher to assist students to learn optimally in reading. The new teacher, in turn, can take advantage of many ways to discuss with the mentor how to achieve educational objectives, both short range and long range. There are selected word recognition techniques which might well benefit the new teacher in assisting students in reading achievement, such as phonics, syllabification, or using context clues only. The mentor teacher needs to be highly knowledgeable about the reading curriculum and possess strategies of instruction to guide students to become the best they can be in reading. (NKA)