Growing Teachers: Partnerships in Staff Development
by Elizabeth Jones

Chapter 8
I'll Visit Your Class, You Visit Mine: Experienced Teachers as Mentors
by Lisa Poelle

Mentors Share Their Stories*

*Here the storyteller is Lisa Poelle, describing a meeting of the mentor seminar she led weekly for a group of experienced early childhood teachers serving as mentors for teachers (called "interns" in this mentor teacher project) in other centers.

Each week the first half of the mentor seminar was spent in updating each other on situations that had been developing with their interns. Today Marianne told about an especially memorable observation time at her intern's center. She had spent nearly an hour doing a running observation of Georgia, the intern, writing down everything involving Georgia including all of her dialogue with children. During their conference time immediately afterward, Georgia read these notes with delight. She was able to see the reasons behind the children's behaviors: "So that's why Jason was so fussy..." "I thought Julie had the car first...."

For the first time Georgia got a sense of the child's experience from the child's point of view. Because of the level of detail in the notes, she was able to understand how certain words or movements of adults affect what happens next with children. She had been introduced to the possibility of reflecting on her experience. The mentors discussed the importance of learning to do observations like this, and all of them made plans to make such observations of their interns and, in turn, to ask their interns to write observations of their mentors. A level of trust had developed that made this kind of sharing possible.

Cristina described a conflict that erupted between two boys in her intern's preschool classroom. The intern tried to talk to the boys but became increasingly frustrated. She glanced at Cristina for moral support, and Cristina offered to step in. Using social problem-solving techniques she was able to help the children define the problem and generate alternative solutions. The intern was extremely grateful for this demonstration; she had never seen anyone handle a conflict so expertly! She talked to Cristina for a long time, saying that she could do that, too, now that she knew what it looked like.

Another intern, Debbie, had requested ideas for circle time because she had a hard time keeping the children interested. Observing at her mentor's center, she watched closely how her mentor worked with the large group, and on occasion she took over a group time at her mentor's center. This gave her a chance to try things with a group that had no preconceived notions about her abilities. Her confidence grew enormously, and she increased her repertoire substantially. Eventually she tried these activities at her own center while the mentor observed. Because Debbie had established trust in the mentor, she didn't feel nervous and was able to ask for suggestions for improvement, which she genuinely appreciated.

Mentors also talked about days that weren't going so well when the intern observed at the mentor's center. The interns' response was always, "I'm so glad to see that your room isn't perfect." When one child vomited, another had a nosebleed, and everyone else was making the transition to snack time, the room was absolutely chaotic, and the intern leaped into action, taking over snack-time duties. She later told the mentor that it felt good to be able "to give something back."

The setting

As a child care consultant for the Children's Health Council of Palo Alto, California, I had frequent opportunities to model certain techniques for teachers in their classrooms. I became increasingly aware of the value of simply watching another skilled adult work effectively with children. I also discovered that while some teachers have access to a knowledgeable director or coteacher who can provide them with personal and useful feedback to their questions, many new teachers lack a strong support system. They may be team teaching with someone who is also fairly new to the field. Their director may not have time to offer regular feedback and personal support.

Concurrently, I saw that a good many veteran teachers were leaving the field after spending many years developing their expertise. Some were frustrated with the steady stream of new teachers who required substantial training and then moved on after only a few months on the job. Some felt taken for granted by parents and co-workers. They believed that they had reached the top of the career ladder, unless they went on to become directors-and that would mean leaving the children.

I began thinking about what could be done to address the dilemmas of both new and veteran teachers. I asked the following questions:

• How can we honor the excellence of our veteran teachers?
• How can we create a new rung on the career ladder for these experienced teachers?
• How can we stem the turnover among new teachers who become frustrated with so much responsibility after so little training and ongoing support?
• Could these needs be addressed by arranging ways for teachers to help each other?

I set out to develop a program that would enable knowledgeable and highly skilled veteran teachers to develop a gratifying and mutually beneficial relationship with committed and enthusiastic new teachers and with each other, as well. The outcome was a proposal for a mentor teacher program that I asked the Children's Health Council to sponsor.

Children's Health Council is a 40-year-old, multidisciplinary, private, nonprofit agency dedicated to serving children and their families by providing a variety of diagnostic, therapeutic, and educational services. While its primary focus is on children with special needs, it has also, over a 10-year period, provided more than 300 hours per year of consultation and staff training on site at child care centers in the area, at little or no cost to parents or staff. Because of the never-ending need for such service created by the high rate of staff turnover in child care centers, a proposal for an innovative, cost-effective approach to the problem of providing child care consultation was welcomed by the agency staff and, ultimately, by foundations to which we applied for support. The letter from the Children's Health Council directors that accompanied our funding request summed up the project as follows:

The concept is simple. Each semester eight experienced and skillful child care teachers will be selected and matched with eight enthusiastic, bright, but inexperienced child care teachers in different centers. The experienced teachers will observe, consult, support, and mentor the new teachers. Both groups will gain in skills and job satisfaction. The Children's Health Council will provide the training and ongoing supervision of the mentors through biweekly seminars. Over a two-year period 32 mentor teachers will develop consultant skills, which they in turn can share with their own centers and others in the child care community. In this way the available pool of skilled child care consultants will be expanded. A secondary but no less important gain will be the increased job satisfaction of the participating mentors and teachers, which hopefully will increase their likelihood of remaining in the field. While the "mentor" concept is well known in business and is currently being developed in the public schools, it is a new concept for child care programs. We believe that this innovative program has potential for replication in many communities throughout the nation. Our staff plans to develop conference presentations as well as written materials for distribution.

The project recruited participants from the dozen communities within a 30-minute drive of the council, on the San Francisco peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. Although this area includes a wide socioeconomic range and some racial diversity, project participants were primarily White and middle class.

Building the mentoring network

To contact teachers who might choose to become mentors or interns, we sent information packets and application forms to 50 local child care directors. We decided to go through directors because they would need to "nominate" teachers for the program and give them release time for doing observations in the other teacher's center. Because many of the directors had previously used the council's consultation services, we believed that we would get a good response. With follow-up phone calls as well, we received 19 applications within six weeks-9 for intern positions and 10 for mentor positions.

Applicants were asked to list their past work experience and education and to respond to four essay questions. Potential mentors were asked the following:

1. What do you see as important components of high-quality child care?
2. Who has influenced your style of teaching and/or theory of child development (authors, instructors, co-workers. etc.)? How? What did you learn from them? Please be as specific as possible.
3. Describe your past experience in working with new teachers. What did you enjoy? What did you find frustrating?
4. Why do you want to be a part of this program?

Potential interns were asked these questions:

1. Why did you choose to work in this field?
2. Think of the best teacher you know.What is it about himor her that you admire?
3. As a teacher, what do you currently see as your main areas of strength?
4. In what areas would you like help and ideas?

Our plan was to review the applications and then to visit each applicant's center for an hour to observe the teacher in action with children. Visits would give us an opportunity to view the classroom setting and gather information about the teacher's style, personality, and competence. Questions in an observation guide asked for the observer's impressions of the applicant's interactions with children, with other staff, and with parents; her intervention in a conflict situation; and the overall environment. Paper screening, paired observations, and final screening and matching were done by the volunteer members of a selection committee, of which I was also a member.

We eliminated three mentor applicants through the paper screening; one had less than five years' teaching experience; one was a director without regular teaching duties; and one answered the essay questions very poorly, giving us the impression of poor communications skills and limited theoretical background. Following observations, we met to match up the candidates. Our plan was to have two categories: infant-toddler teachers and preschool teachers. We screened out as mentors an experienced preschool teacher now working with infants, who had not yet developed confidence with this age level, and a kindergarten teacher for whom no suitable match could be found. We screened out as interns two of three applicants from the same classroom and an applicant with 14 years' experience, whose behavior with children was cursory and custodial (her director had told her to apply because she "needed the training").

We tried to match interns and mentors by personality, needs/strengths, logistics, and the age groups they were currently working with. As it turned out, we needed to find another infant-toddler intern for an outstanding infant-toddler mentor candidate. I described our dilemma to the mentor, who gave us the name of an acquaintance who might be interested. We contacted this person, who was indeed interested, and made arrangements to observe her. Luckily the match was a good one. We settled on a final group of two infant toddler mentoring couples and four preschool mentoring couples. Together they represented a wide variety of program types-employer supported, church affiliated, private nonprofit, proprietary, and state funded.(Later mentor-intern groups also included part-day preschools and family day care.)

Mentors received a stipend of $500 for the semester. Interns were invited to enroll for three semester units of credit from the local community college, Canada College. The project also reimbursed centers for hiring substitutes to make the observations possible.

An orientation meeting was held at Children's Health Council for mentoring couples to get acquainted and to plan their initial observation times at each other's centers. Spirits were high as we launched this new program.

Staff development strategies

The plan was for alternating weekly visits of one and a half hours, first by the mentor to her intern's center and then by the intern to her mentor's center. Weekly one-and-a-half hour conferences were arranged so that the mentor and the intern could discuss the observations and other questions of mutual interest. Some couples decided to meet over dinner, others for an extended lunch break. In addition the mentors had a biweekly late-afternoon meeting with me-our mentor seminar.

The intensive observation schedule provided a wealth of stories about children's and teachers' experiences in the classroom. Mentors took notes that they shared with interns. Interns watched their mentors in action with children, asked questions, and had opportunities to see both good and bad moments in someone else's classroom. By their questions and their efforts to model their own behavior on their mentor's, interns reflected and validated the mentors' work. By their observations and comments, mentors reflected, validated, and provided new possibilities for the interns as growing teachers. It became evident that the regular presence in one's classroom of another teacher with whom one has a relationship serves as affirmation of the importance and reality of one's daily work: Someone other than me knows and cares about what I'm doing. Participants found it especially meaningful to have someone appreciate the subtleties of their craft. Quality child care can be such a quiet accomplishment

In my consulting I have been conscious of my responsibility as an expert; my role is to provide information to child care centers that have asked for help. Because I had this in mind as I designed the mentor seminars that I was to lead, I divided each seminar into two parts: sharing/problem solving and content/presentation. Most of our time would be devoted to talking about relationships: mentor/intern, teacher/child, teacher/ teacher, and teacher/administrator. I planned to introduce discussion content on individual differences in temperament, management of behavior problems, and the role of the teacher during free play. In addition I arranged for talks by several clinicians from Children's Health Council who had broadened my own understanding of children's development and behavior. I hoped to add another dimension for the mentors by addressing what appeared to be a void in most teachers' educational backgrounds: a working knowledge of developmental "red flags" and understanding of the therapeutic intervention process. As a representative of Children's Health Council, I had often encountered, even in experienced and mature teachers, a lack of knowledge in these areas.

We began our first mentor seminar by listening to descriptions of each classroom setting, mentors' and interns', in order to form "pictures" for ourselves. As each person shared her recent experiences, feelings of enthusiasm were mixed with feelings of confusion about the mentor role. While everyone believed in the concept of mentoring, no one had ever before been involved in a relationship formed solely for that purpose. Mentors weren't sure how "directive" to be with their interns. They thought of themselves mainly as responders to questions and requests for help-as facilitators in a process initiated by the intern. Some interns had made things easier for the mentors by bringing clear-cut issues to conference times, but others seemed to rely on the mentor to supply them with topics for discussion.

I encouraged the mentors to structure the conference times as loosely or as formally as they found necessary, depending on the intern's contribution. They could choose to begin by simply sharing what they observed in each other's classrooms, describing interesting play, language, child behavior, and so forth. I also suggested sharing stories about children from their own present or past teaching experiences that might relate to the intern's stories in the here-and-now.

Each week the first half of the seminar was spent in updating each other on situations that had been developing in the various centers. Sometimes the mentors talked about issues they had been discussing with their interns. Sometimes they talked more about their own centers' issues and the struggles they were having personally. Just as the mentor-intern conferences were opportunities for storytelling about interns' new progress as teachers, the mentor seminars were opportunities for mentors to share their own stories about teaching with this group of peers. The group developed into a sensitive and supportive "oasis," as one mentor put it.

Unanticipated consequences

Directors' reactions

Problems that arose out of the design of the mentor program reflected the extent to which center directors had been "left out of the loop." While we contacted directors to recruit mentors and interns, we had no further planned contact with them until midway through the semester, when I hosted a luncheon for them. The purpose of this luncheon was to thank them for their support, to offer a chance for them to do some networking, and to get feedback on the program from a director's point of view. I especially wanted to know if they were dissatisfied with any part of the program so that I could make the necessary changes.

Most comments were glowing; interns and mentors had told their directors wonderful things about their experience. All directors said they would be willing to participate again with another teacher. Several of the interns' directors, however, were uneasy about someone's "judging" their program based on the performance of a novice teacher. As we talked it became apparent that at the beginning of each semester, the mentoring pair should meet with the intern's director to allow her to explain the philosophy of the center. Directors simply do not trust the intern to explain the operation and philosophy of the center adequately.

During this discussion it became clear to me that there were other underlying issues. Some directors sponsored interns because they had certain training goals in mind. They really wanted to be able to take the mentor aside and tell her what the intern should be working on. The goal of the program, however, was to enable people to be self-directed in their learning. It was frustrating for these directors to be so impotent in relation to the program.

I believe that I heard some jealousy voiced by a few directors. The mentors and interns had developed a very special and intimate relationship. It seemed to me that most directors would love the opportunity to nurture and support their staff the way mentors can do, but their job doesn't usually allow enough time to develop that kind of closeness.

I saw the content of the mentor-intern conference as "emergent curriculum for adults." This was explained to the directors at the beginning of the program, and their response was that they were happy to, offer this "perk" to their novice teachers; but as the interns showed signs of growth and self-confidence, some directors seemed to want to participate in the "finetuning" efforts. When they saw that the mentor had been able to help the intern, they wanted to use the mentor as a tool for their own agenda.

It seems likely that directors' uneasy feelings stem from a disruption of the hierarchy. The mentor program presents an interesting dilemma for the intern's director; you can get a personal coach/trainer for a promising new teacher, but you and your center give up a certain amount of privacy and control. By allowing this new teacher to observe elsewhere, you risk losing her to a more appealing center. New teachers are more prone to relocating; their loyalty is not firmly established and they may be still "testing the waters."

For effective directors confident of their center's quality, this risk may not be apparent. Two of the directors who felt very comfortable with the structure of the mentor program explained that they would want to relay information to the mentor only through the intern. The mentor intern relationship should be private; directors should definitely not give input on goal setting. This program, they believed, was a way for new teachers to share their insecurities and questions with someone without fear of affecting their performance evaluations and raises. The principle of external facilitation was clearly one that they understood.

Leaving jobs

The directors least comfortable with the program structure were, understandably, those whose interns were critical of their centers. The stickiest situation, which raised a dilemma for all of us, involved an intern who became so disillusioned with her own center during the course of the semester that she wanted to quit her job and apply for a job opening in her mentor's center. She had been trying to reconcile differences in teaching styles with her co-worker, but her efforts had proven futile. She felt that the director was not being supportive and that there was no hope of working things out.

This was disturbing news to me; I believed that her director would blame my program for causing her to lose a teacher. It would look as though the mentor "stole" the intern away from her center.

We discussed this problem at length at the seminar. The intern had been exposed to a "master teacher"-her mentor. Her eyes had been opened to the kind of child-oriented, developmentally appropriate practice that characterizes skillful interaction with young children. While she endeavored to model herself after this person, she began to see the flaws in her own co-teacher's approach. It got harder and harder for the intern to tolerate the philosophical differences, and she had no success in resolving those differences through staff meetings or conferences with the director.

When the opening came up in the mentor's classroom, it was like a dream-come-true for the intern. She wanted to apply for the position, but she did not want to jeopardize the mentor program by doing so.

I asked the mentor if the intern would consider waiting to resign until after the semester ended. If she left prior to the end, we would have to drop that pair from the program because the conditions of their relationship and the locations would be changed. This plan might work if the intern were indeed hired by the mentor's center and if that center would agree to hold the job open until the end of the semester.

As it turned out this plan did work. The intern gave her notice but agreed to stay until the end of the semester. The other center interviewed her and hired her to come aboard after the program ended. The director of the intern's center was not happy with this outcome, but she was glad to have two months to find a replacement.

At first I was disappointed that one of "my" interns had not experienced "increased job satisfaction" due to this program, as my goals stated; however, it turns out that the intern has found a center that is a better match for her philosophically. She now has increased job satisfaction and, although it meant leaving her original center, she is more likely to remain in the field because she is happier at her job.

By the end of the semester, another intern had decided to leave her job. She had been struggling with her director over philosophical differences and policy decisions all year. The issues were mainly those involving contact with parents. This intern was actually the head teacher in her room. She had talked with her mentor about often feeling powerless in developing stronger parent-teacher relationships because of the policies that called for director-parent conferencing, excluding the teachers. Certain situations had come up during the semester that had created communication problems for the intern, and she had shared those with her mentor. The mentor offered support and guidance in trying to resolve the issues, but to no avail. By the end of the program, the intern had given notice to her director. She actually took several months off, trying to decide if she even wanted to stay in the field. In the end she applied for and accepted a position at her mentor's center, even though the mentor had since left to go to graduate school.

This intern chose to stay in the field because, through observations in the mentor program, she had been exposed to a center that practiced high-quality child care and strong staff support. She had a broader sense of what the field had to offer because she had the opportunity to see new things.

While the director was not happy at this turn of events, I believe that these kinds of changes are good for the field as a whole. If teachers leave over program-quality issues, then it can be hoped that the administrators will take a fresh look at their programs. Good teachers are hard to replace.

Adult relationship issues

I hadn't anticipated that the majority of the conferencing times would be spent talking about program issues involving adults-team-teaching conflicts, systems problems, disagreements with administration, staffing changes, and so on. I had thought that most of the time would be spent discussing problems related to children, probably because that had been the number-one request in my consultation work. It is clear, however, that new teachers have a real need to talk about the issues that arise out of the process of collaboration.

People have strong opinions about how children should be cared for. Coming to some kind of agreement is not always easy. Issues of control and competition enter too many centers, making the child's needs secondary to the staff s needs. Through this project I found that new teachers as well as veteran teachers are constantly being faced with challenges to their professionalism. They need ways to reassess their beliefs, and talking with a supportive colleague is a good way to do that "reality check."

One drawback to having a supportive colleague was that sometimes interns would quote mentors at staff meetings. This was not usually well received by other staff or by directors. The mentors of these interns solved the problem by asking the interns to be more discreet, voicing their opinions but not giving credit to the mentors.

Empowering teachers

The project empowered interns by supporting risk taking on their part. Interns were more likely to speak up with other staff members at their centers; two decided to apply for jobs at other centers; one intern later became a mentor. Teachers who become more confident and knowledgeable do not necessarily limit their behavioral changes to their interactions with children. They may demand system changes as well.

Similarly, mentors were empowered in their communication skills and their willingness to take risks. Directors commented that their teachers who were mentors had become more tolerant and skillful in relationships with their coworkers. They seemed to have fine-tuned their leadership skills, demonstrating and intervening more smoothly than before. There was also a bonus in the intern's visits, one director remarked: When the intern comes to observe, everyone seems to do their best job.

In evaluating their experience in the program, mentors emphasized the importance of being affirmed as professionals.

• "It was a real pleasure to share common territory on equal terms. This opportunity confirmed the professional aspect of my job."
• "Being identified as a 'master-level teacher' was gratifying. I've been feeling taken for granted at my center."
• "This definitely transferred to my job, creating new interest in old things."
• "It made me feel useful to the profession in a totally new way."
• "With the amount of turnover in this field, it was very nice to know that there are other dedicated teachers out there."

One mentor applied again as a mentor for the following semester.

Although each mentor was selected in part for her ability to demonstrate effective caregiving/teaching techniques, not all were used to translating their practice into words. Being asked to articulate reasons for their style of teaching gave mentors an opportunity, in the words of one mentor, "to polish your own mirror." Mentors found themselves speaking with more confidence to parents as well as to staff. Several developed workshop presentations for local conferences.

Like the interns, not all mentors experienced increased satisfaction in their current jobs. Several have moved toward administration or taken initiative in developing new programs. Several have returned to school. One joined Children's Health Council as a child care consultant and took over my position as coordinator of the mentor program in its second year.

What was taught and learned?

Mentor seminars

The mentor seminar was critical to the effectiveness of the program. Mentoring is a difficult concept to grasp. Many questions arise in terms of specific behavior. At times a mentor is passive, listening and observing; at other times she is active, advising and modeling. Deciding which approach will best help the intern requires a high degree of thoughtfulness and excellent interpersonal skills.

When the mentors met together, they talked about situations they were encountering and strategies they were using as they worked toward becoming effective mentors. While I facilitated these discussions, the mentors proved an invaluable resource for each other. They felt confident in their abilities but appreciated the chance to come together to discuss difficult or confusing situations. Issues in working with adults were the primary focus of discussions, and this was also the case in many of the discussions between mentors and interns. Coming to agreement with co-workers may be a more difficult challenge than working effectively with young children.

Mentors were stimulated by the professional level of the discussions; they had found like-minded colleagues with whom they could discuss their field. Many had been out of school for some years and were refreshed by involvement in a new educational program. They devoured advanced-level child development information given by me or other speakers, and all of us shared with each other resources that we had been collecting for many years. Interns appreciated handouts and curriculum ideas that mentors were able to provide for them, and mentors made good use of materials from the seminar, using them in their own work as much as with the interns.

Observing

The observation component of the program was a major reason for its success. In some other mentor programs, the intern observes the mentor teacher in her classroom and then tries to apply what she has learned in her own class, assessing what she is doing without direct feedback. When the mentor comes to the intern's classroom on a regular basis, however, she really gets to know the children and can directly offer pertinent feedback based on observations made while the intern is absorbed in working with the children. The observer becomes a third eye, a recorder of the big picture. Having someone describe a classroom scene from the periphery and then share it objectively is a rare gift for a teacher. In the mentor program these observations became the foundation for many philosophical as well as practical discussions.

Relationships with directors

We found that the mentor in a child care program needs special sensitivity to center protocol. The mentor-intern relationship has potential for threatening the authority of the intern's director. Stepping into a center as an "expert" disrupts the normal hierarchy that has been established among staff. Mentors must take care to develop some kind of rapport with the director, even though she or he is not directly involved in the mentoring relationship; for example, simply making an effort to sign in and say hello helped to build a connection between mentor and director.

In making revisions in the continuing program, we rewrote the orientation letter to directors, asked mentor-intern pairs to arrange a meeting with the director prior to the first observation, moved up the date of the directors' luncheon, and were explicit in asking that directors be informed of all observation times and be given all handout information. We also added a clause to the agreement form about remaining at the sponsoring center during the program.

Recruiting and matching participants

Recruiting efforts must be sustained. We have made presentations at conferences and community colleges, as well as contacting directors by mail, in order to assure an adequate applicant pool. We also extended our geographic base, accepting applications from anyone willing to make the necessary drive.

Even when the pool is adequate, the complexity of matching pairs has resulted in our never having more than six pairs in any semester. It is important, we have found, to match mentors and interns very carefully based on personal schedules, personalities, type of center, and distance to be traveled. The weekly conferences are crucial to the success of the experience. People have to be compatible for their relationship to flourish. We have also found it necessary to emphasize the role of the mentor as model and support person rather than evaluator. Where one mentor persisted in seeing her role as evaluator, trust and mutual respect never developed.

It is also important to provide each person with a partner working with a similar child population. Mentoring works best when pairs come from centers with similar socioeconomic groups and similar overall structure. Mentors are frequently asked for advice by their interns, and they feel more comfortable offering advice when they are familiar with the type of center and population served. Within the mentor seminar, however, diversity is a positive factor, giving mentors a broader base on which to build new insights about working with children.

In each semester I saw the mentor-intern pairs developing two types of relationships. On one level was the pair who spent the majority of their time sharing curriculum materials and circle-time ideas. They enjoyed observing each other at work and meeting together for the conference. Some even made plans to get together occasionally after the program ended. The interns felt supported and definitely gained new skills, but their level of professional interest was not high. Some were simply overloaded in all areas of their lives. Some were less motivated; they had been encouraged by their directors to participate rather than choosing freely for themselves.

The second type of relationship happened more often. This pair also shared resource materials, but the classroom observations served as a launching pad for looking at the complexity of human behavior. Both teachers sharpened their skills by close study of the interactions between children and adults. They became more articulate in defining developmentally appropriate practice when talking to other teachers or to parents. The intern got into the habit of thinking about how she teaches. A high level of trust developed, enabling both intern and mentor to share difficult feelings and struggles within their centers and to feel validated and supported.

Some participants wrote on their evaluation forms that the program helped them to decide to stay in the field. Said one intern,

When I began the mentor program I was very discouraged and my self-esteem was low. I was wondering why I was even teaching and ready to quit. I was up against many obstacles and had little support.... My mentor validated me as a teacher. She gave me the courage; she filled my well; she helped me get direction and enthusiasm. I love my work now. I am at peace and I know I am a good teacher!

I believe that this program will continue to be a strong model, showing that individualized training opportunities have a powerful impact in child care. While most traditional teacher-training programs offer information in an adult classroom setting, apart from the children, this program uses real-life situations with customized feedback. It provides a "practicum" for the new teacher in her own center, with the extra benefit of a master teacher giving advice and support.

Teachers of young children are in different stages of professional development. The most effective training is that which addresses the questions teachers have about their own current work situation. It is important that we develop ways to use our existing resources-those experienced people still actively teaching, who can be role models for a new generation of child care professionals.

The Mentor Teacher Program, which began in 1989, is still alive and well in spring 1993 and has continued to recruit an average of six mentor-intern pairs each semester. Contact Monika Perez, Children's Health Council, 700 Sand Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, (415) 326-5530.

For further information

Poelle, L. (1992). The mentor program. Unpublished master's thesis, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, CA.

Poelle, L., Marsh, M., & Nattinger, P. (1990, November). Child care mentor teacher programs: New opportunities for professional recognition and merit compensation. Paper presented at the NAEYC Annual Conference, Washington, DC. (Materials available from authors)

Other suggested readings

Bey, T.M., & Holmes, C.T. (Eds.). (1990). Mentoring Developing successful new teachers. Reston, VA: Association of Teacher Educators.

Boston, B.O. (1976). The sorcerer's apprentice. A case study in the role of the mentor, Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children.

Daloz, L.A. (1986). Effective teaching and mentoring. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fagan, M.M., &Walter, G. (1982). Mentoring among teachers. Journal of Educational Research 76(2), 113-118.

Greenman, J.T., & Fuqua, R.W. (1984). Making day care better: Training, evaluation, and the process of change. New York: Teachers College Press.

Howey, K. (1988). Mentor-teachers as inquiring professionals. Theory into Practice, 27(3), 209-213.

Johnston, J.M. (1984, March). Assessing staff problems: Key to effective staff development. Child Care Information Exchange, 36, 19-22.

Jorde-Bloom, P. (1988). A great place to work: Improving conditions for staff in young children's programs. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Katz, L.M. (1977). Talks with teachers: Reflections on early childhood education. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Lambert, D. (1985). Mentor teachers as change facilitators. Thrust for Educational Leadership, 14(6). 28-32.

Lowrey, R.G. (1986). Mentor teachers: The California model. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.

Miller, L.M., Thomson, W.A., & Roush, R.E. (1989). Mentorships and the perceived educational payoffs. Phi Delta Kappan, 70(6), 465-467.

Odell, S.J. (1990). Mentor teacher programs. Washington, DC: National Education Association.

Sheerer, M., & Jorde-Bloom, P. (1990). The ongoing challenge: Attracting and retaining quality staff. Child Care Information Exchange 72, 11-16.

Shulman, J.H. (1988). Look to a colleague. Instructor, 97(5), 32-34.

Shulman, J.H.. & Colbert, J.A. (1987). The mentor teacher casebook. San Francisco: Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development.

Spodek, B., Saracho, O.N., & Peters, D.L. (Eds.). Professionalism and the early childhood practitioner. New York: Teachers College Press.

Whitebook, M. (Ed.). (1989). The national child care staffing study executive summary. Berkeley, CA. Child Care Employee Project.

To contact the author, write

Lisa Poelle, Marpoli Associates, Inc., Child Care Consultation and Management, 1105 S. Baywood Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128.