worrying about mentoring

I know, I know – we all love “mentoring!”  Those of us who do this work in early childhood TA recognize that its “new” attention in the QRIS and Race to the Top world means there is an increasing understanding that relationships – on going relationships – are the key to creating successful and sustained changes in teacher and administrator practices.  If acknowledging that relationships are important were enough, how simple it would be to fine-tune our quality support efforts!  But mentoring is a very big bucket of strategies, attributes and approaches.  There is also a very similar bucket called coaching.  As policy makers tackle translating this new appreciation of “relationship-based TA” (Kagan, 2010)  into standards and projects, we hope they resist a simplistic, superficial nod to mentoring without a careful investment in the details.  If we simply reframe our current TA by calling it mentoring, without preparing the TA field with serious professional development and guidance, the result could be the worst possible missed opportunity yet.  Loosely applying the term “mentoring” on existing, TA Lite strategies would mean an incredible lost opportunity.  An appreciation of the importance of mentoring is one of those big shifts in thinking that will make the difference for young children – or not.  If we can hold our decision-makers to the true wisdom in mentoring strategies, even in light of its significant costs, then we can make real headway in improving children’s experiences.  If we can’t, we will continue to tinker around at the edges of making changes and continue to frustrate TA professionals!  I hope those of us in the TA field will loudly advocate for true mentoring – and coaching, and other effective strategies – so that we can finally get some real traction for change!

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