An Administrator's Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring 2nd Edition

Dr. Bill Fibkins, a great educator, has trained and inspired scores of teachers and now he’s done it again in this second edition. Bill’s work emphasizes that no longer is it acceptable for teachers to merely teach content-they need to address the needs of the whole child, especially because so many children live chaotic lives. Novice teachers need to be trained with techniques and strategies focused on classroom management by veteran teachers armed with hard-earned experiences gained after many years in the classroom. A process that offers veteran teachers a new opportunity for professional growth. The student cannot succeed without the skilled teacher, of course, but neither can the teacher survive without the success of the student. They are in it together, both connected, and they are our future. Dr. Fibkin is providing us with the blueprint, and this must be required reading for those who want to see our schools succeed.

Dr. Fibkins second edition of An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring 2nd Edition adds important and timely information to the core of his original work. While the prevailing thinking today demands that we leave no child behind, Dr. Fibkins counsels that we leave teachers behind at our peril. By paying attention to the career needs of teachers, both novice and veteran, we do more to service students than most other interventions. The research is clear: school cultures thrive where teachers are treated as professionals and where teacher leadership is nurtured. One of the more successful antidotes to teacher burnout, in fact, has been offering senior teachers the opportunity to mentor younger colleagues. In this latest edition, Fibkins details how this approach can breathe new life into a school environment. Whether citing the literature or recalling an anecdote from his long career, Fibkins is spot on in his analysis of what ails our schools. This is especially true in his insistence that if we care about our students we also have to care about our teachers.

I highly recommend this new edition of Bill Fibkin’s book on mentoring. Over the years, I have worked closely with teachers in both primary and secondary education. In my experience the well-trained, collaborative teacher may be the one consistently responsive adult in a child’s life. Many of us retrospectively credit a teacher for our own productive adult lives. Bill’s prescription of mentoring is a critical asset for both experienced teacher preservation and new teacher retention. The mentor learns anew by supporting a grateful young colleague, and the young teacher grows in respect to self and chosen profession. Better yet, isolation is relieved for both. As Bill suggests, teacher and student are inextricably connected on a path to learning. For the abused and/or neglected child, the connection can lead to life long healing. .

I would highly recommend Dr. Fibkins’ second edition of An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring 2nd Edition due largely to the fact that teachers are a valuable source of indicators of child abuse. As a Director of a Court Appointed Special Advocate Program (CASA), we depend on the observations of teachers at all grade levels when we investigate the educational background and psychological well-being of a child. Therefore, as Dr. Fibkins suggests, it is important for novice teachers to have the opportunity to gain knowledge and wisdom from ‘seasoned’ teachers in order to intervene with at-risk students before serious problems emerge. Teachers mentoring teachers is an innovative approach to bringing all teachers on board and not letting any children fall through the cracks. .Dr. Fibkins visionary program sheds a whole new light on the old ‘3Rs’ … it’s now, refresh, react, and reboot!

In this second edition of his book, Dr. Fibkins makes administrators aware of the immediate need for intervention programs to help stop the attrition of novice teachers. However, he does not stop there. He goes a step further by reminding us that a school is a community; therefore, we must all care for each other and not look the other way when a colleague is having trouble. Hence, he has coined ‘No Teacher Left Behind.’ Dr. Fibkins passionately emphasizes the responsibility of not letting teachers fall through the cracks by embracing mentoring for both the veteran as well as the novice teacher. Fortunately, he does not offer a one-size-fits-all approach to mentoring-he offers alternative ways to mentor both the veteran and novice teacher. Dr. Fibkins also gives administrators the why’s and how’s of engaging veteran teachers one-by-one to create conditions for renewal and a second act.

School reform-the real school reform that is grounded in each school’s own reality and not theory-can only come from within, when stakeholders share the knowledge of the history of the building and of its community. What I love about this book is the no-nonsense, easy-to-read, anecdotal recounting that can be understood and applied by “newbies” and veterans, teachers and administrators. While our roles are ever-changing, the information here is timeless and a breath of fresh air, as compared to the many theoretical but inapplicable writings that are out there.