Responsive Mentoring - by Wendy Gardiner & Nina F Weisling (Paperback)

About the Book

Responsive Mentoring advocates for an approach to mentoring that is teacher-centered, scaffolded, and contextualized to teachers' work.

Book Synopsis

Responsive Mentoring: Supporting the Teachers All Students Deserve advocates for a collaborative approach to mentoring that is teacher-centered, scaffolded, and contextualized to teachers' work. This approach is designed to help teachers across their careers set and meet ambitious instructional goals, while also developing as reflective practitioners who learn in and from their teaching, in order to ensure all students receive a rigorous and engaging educational experience.

Mentoring is a highly complex and critical endeavor. To guide mentors' work, a clear vision for mentoring is coupled with a highly-responsive set of mentoring practices. Recommendations and real world examples help mentors make informed decisions about which practices to use, under what circumstances, and in what combinations, in order to responsively and effectively facilitate teacher learning and development. Concrete and practical advice along with questions for reflection and action help mentors across contexts and levels of experience. A final section outlining intentional and versatile strategies for mentoring-the-mentor ensures that all mentors also have supports to grow as professionals.

Review Quotes

"This book on effective teacher mentoring in schools is an invaluable gift we have been waiting for. Drawing from extensive research, Wendy Gardiner and Nina Weisling offer practical guides to support aspiring and seasoned teachers and to provide mentoring to mentors themselves. Each chapter unwraps important concepts and lessons that can fundamentally lead to transforming both teaching practices and the teaching profession." --Roland Sintos Coloma, professor and assistant dean, teacher education; co-director, Kaplan Center for Research on Urban Education, Wayne State University

"This is definitely the book I would've wanted to read when I was coaching and mentoring teachers as a young "veteran" teacher and then again when I was helping to build a district mentoring program. Nevertheless, I am supremely grateful that Wendy and Nina have combined their incredible research and boots-on-the-ground experience to give us this insightful, practical, and immediately applicable set of definitions, knowledge, and skills for the development of mentors in a time when our profession is suffering greatly from declines in enrollment in teacher prep programs and extremely high rates of attrition. In my current work, helping to build teacher residency programs in which mentors are a pillar of the model and part of the solution to our teacher shortage, quality, and retention challenges, this book couldn't come at a better time as a resource to my programs and their mentors and also as a resource to help elevate the teaching profession writ large." --Rosemary Baker, associate program director, National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR)

"Responsive Mentoring: Supporting the Teachers All Students Deserve is a theoretically sound road map of how best to improve teaching practices by focusing on "ambitious instruction" and preparing a cadre of teacher leaders. Gardiner and Weisling advance our understanding of two core assumptions as they provide thick description of powerful routines and procedures for looking deeply and creatively within classrooms: 1) Teachers can and should "learn in and from teaching"; and 2) Being a highly effective teacher does not automatically make you an exemplary mentor. The techniques come alive with examples drawn from the authors' own experiences as teacher educators, mentors and master teachers. This volume is more than a "how-to" manual. It is a call to action for making schools vibrant learning environments for adults and children." --Harriet R. Fayne, professor, leadership studies; former dean, Lehman College (CUNY) School of Education

"Responsive Mentoring: Supporting the Teachers All Students Deserve presents the case for the use of Educative Mentoring -- shifting the way we think of, plan for, and implement mentoring in education. Drs. Gardiner and Weisling use the voices of teachers, mentors, and researchers to provide support and a framework for inside and outside mentoring, mentoring cycles, and cycles of inquiry that can be used to develop mentoring strategies and practices. As an educator and administrator with over 30 years of experience, I learned something new with each chapter. I highly recommend this text for anyone in the field who is interested in innovative ways to develop our next generation of educational leaders. The unique blend of practical and developmental strategies can be used by practitioners, colleges of education, and school leaders in order to develop a varied repertoire in support of teachers' professional development." --Gloria McDaniel-Hall, assistant professor, Educational Leadership, National Louis University

"This is a clear, practical guide to effective, responsive mentoring built on trust and collegiality. Drawing from a wealth of research and on-the-ground experience, the authors share approaches to mentoring that include building strong relationships; collaborative goal setting; different types of classroom observations; teaching demonstrations and rehearsals; and debriefing with tools like video analysis. Highly recommended for new and experienced mentors alike." --Sarah R. Levine, assistant professor, Graduate School of Education, Stanford

Responsive Mentoring: Supporting the Teachers All Students Deserve presents the case for the use of Educative Mentoring -- shifting the way we think of, plan for, and implement mentoring in education. Drs. Gardiner and Weisling use the voices of teachers, mentors, and researchers to provide support and a framework for inside and outside mentoring, mentoring cycles, and cycles of inquiry that can be used to develop mentoring strategies and practices. As an educator and administrator with over 30 years of experience, I learned something new with each chapter. I highly recommend this text for anyone in the field who is interested in innovative ways to develop our next generation of educational leaders. The unique blend of practical and developmental strategies can be used by practitioners, colleges of education, and school leaders in order to develop a varied repertoire in support of teachers' professional development.

This book on effective teacher mentoring in schools is an invaluable gift we have been waiting for. Drawing from extensive research, Wendy Gardiner and Nina Weisling offer practical guides to support aspiring and seasoned teachers and to provide mentoring to mentors themselves. Each chapter unwraps important concepts and lessons that can fundamentally lead to transforming both teaching practices and the teaching profession.

This is a clear, practical guide to effective, responsive mentoring built on trust and collegiality. Drawing from a wealth of research and on-the-ground experience, the authors share approaches to mentoring that include building strong relationships; collaborative goal setting; different types of classroom observations; teaching demonstrations and rehearsals; and debriefing with tools like video analysis. Highly recommended for new and experienced mentors alike.

This is definitely the book I would've wanted to read when I was coaching and mentoring teachers as a young "veteran" teacher and then again when I was helping to build a district mentoring program. Nevertheless, I am supremely grateful that Wendy and Nina have combined their incredible research and boots-on-the-ground experience to give us this insightful, practical, and immediately applicable set of definitions, knowledge, and skills for the development of mentors in a time when our profession is suffering greatly from declines in enrollment in teacher prep programs and extremely high rates of attrition. In my current work, helping to build teacher residency programs in which mentors are a pillar of the model and part of the solution to our teacher shortage, quality, and retention challenges, this book couldn't come at a better time as a resource to my programs and their mentors and also as a resource to help elevate the teaching profession writ large.

About the Author

Wendy Gardiner is currently an Associate Professor and the Jolita Hylland Benson Endowed Chair in Elementary Education at Pacific Lutheran University where she teaches literacy courses. For nearly 20 years she has mentored pre-service, new, and veteran teachers in urban schools and has worked with mentors conducting research to inform and advance this important work.

Nina F. Weisling is currently an Assistant Professor of Education at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where she primarily teaches courses related to special education and conducts research related to mentoring and inclusive practices. Prior to this she was a special educator, general educator, and mentor for pre-service, new, and veteran teachers.