National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center (http://www.educ.iastate.edu/nflrc/)

Alumni Connection Newsletter - October, 2003 - Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Document Source: http://www.educ.iastate.edu/nflrc/news/200310/

Mentoring, Leadership, and Change

Welcome to the October electronic newsletter of the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center!

All of us are mentors. We are often called to formally or informally mentor others. We mentor our students and young teachers in our schools, we mentor new leaders in our organizations. Mentoring is a form of leadership, which requires creating a vision and helping others achieve goals. Mentoring and leadership are integral pieces of our professional practice. Embedded in the mentoring and leadership is the element of change. Understanding the concept of change and its inherent complexity is an integral part of mentoring and leadership. So we begin our 2003-04 newsletter by looking at the issues of mentoring, leadership and change in education today.

Cindy Kendall, Newsletter Editor
Marcia Rosenbusch, Director, National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center

Focus on Our Alumni
During the 2003 summer a new institute was developed: Mentoring, Leadership and Change (MLC) [1]. This new institute brought together participants of previous NFLRC institutes and others in the profession who have developed expertise in a) action research, b) elementary school foreign language education, c) technology, d) performance assessment, and/or e) thematic planning to synthesize their knowledge and skills in all four topic areas, to expand their perspectives on initiating and sustaining change, and to acquire research-based techniques for creating effective change through mentoring and leadership. Unique to this institute was the active role each participant had in designing and leading a portion of the Institute. The participants collaborated prior to the institute to lead specific days, and the facilitators tied the daily foreign-language specific topics to the concepts of mentoring, leadership and change. It was an exciting institute with insightful, interactive experiences resulting in powerful understandings of how mentoring, leadership and change can improve our professional practice and how to use action research to document best practice, improvement and change. The institute participants created essential understandings [2] or beliefs for each of the topic areas above. You may find these beliefs to be an interesting starting point for discussion with your colleagues.

Featured Website of the Month
Leadership and change are interconnected. Michael Fullan's book Change Forces [3] provided a conceptual framework for thinking about and managing change for this summer's MLC institute. The Center for Development and Learning [4] has brief writings [5] by Fullan and other leaders in education. The topics are primarily related to general education and current trends.

Focus on Research
The University of California Santa Cruz New Teacher Center [6] (NTC) has documented the effectiveness of mentoring new teachers. Research at the New Teacher Center addresses three central questions:

-What are the effects of mentoring on new teacher development, practice, and retention?
-How does new teacher support affect student achievement?
-How do different induction contexts and mentoring conditions affect the professional development of educators?

New Teacher Center research studies fall into four categories: basic research on issues of teacher induction; evaluation studies on NTC projects; secondary analyses of existing data; and contract research for collaborating institutions. The NTC has been studying teacher induction and retention for over 10 years.

Focus on the Teacher Level
Mentoring is more complex that it appears. Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman have created an excellent resource in Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide to Learning-Focused Relationships, 2nd Edition.
From the publisher: "An invaluable reference for mentors of beginning teachers, this guide offers structures, strategies and tools for developing expertise in teaching. Sections include specific information about the mentor’s role, the needs of beginning teachers and the attributes of effective mentor-protégé relationships. Tips for maximizing time and attention, an extensive resource section and blackline masters to support developmental interactions make this book a must-have for mentors." Available through the publisher, Miravia [7], and ASCD [8].

Focus on the Organization Level
Some foreign language professional organizations have mentoring programs. The Northeast Conference [9], in collaboration with its 14 state association members, sponsors a program designed to identify potential leaders in the profession and to support the development of their potential. The Central States Conference [10] has a leadership program to mentor organizational leaders.

Focus on National Level
New Visions in Action [11] is a project involving PreK-16+ foreign language educators from every state in a collaborative effort to improve the profession. Four Task Forces are working to address the needs of our profession: (1) Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Articulation; (2) Teacher Development; (3) Research; and (4) Teacher Recruitment and Retention. All of these groups address directly or indirectly mentoring, leadership and change in foreign language teaching and learning. You can become involved by contacting the Task Force chairperson listed on the website!

Staying on Top with Technology
Mentoring is a topic across ages and professions. Peer Resources [12] in Canada maintains an extensive annotated list of Mentor Services and Organizations that Specialize in Mentoring [13] that is global in scope.

Quotes to Ponder

“In the old culture, managers got their power from secret knowledge: profit margins, market share, and all that. In the new culture, the role of a leader is to express a vision, get buy-in, and implement it.”
Jack Welch, formerly CEO of General Electric

"I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become....Become the change you want to see"
Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, July 2003, p. 186.

"Things do not change, we change."
Henry David Thoreau

"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different."
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes

Memories of Iowa
As we enter fall, the Corn Cam [14] provides us the final glimpse of the harvest season. What else can a farmer do with a corn field? Create a corn maze [15]!

Links in this document

This Newsletter was pepared with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education under Title VI grant #P229A020023. The publication of products and website URLs in this newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and does not imply an endorsement by the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center, Iowa State University, or the positions or policies of the U. S. Department of Education.

Subscription Information
You received this electronic newsletter because you are an alumni of an activity associated with the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center. This newsletter is published monthly. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, email us at nflrc@iastate.edu with the subject line "remove alumni connection."

Content: Do you have suggestions for content? Information to share with fellow alumni? Send your ideas to Cindy Kendall at ckendall@msu.edu.