Special Education Mentoring within the Context of Rural Schools

Abstract This article describes a one-year rural mentor training program designed for novice special education teachers and their teacher mentors. Mentoring efforts to encourage collaboration and collegiality run counter to age-old norms of autonomy and congeniality in the school settings. However, collaborative forums can provide support for both experienced and novice teachers to engage in 'critical friendships' through discussions on the dilemmas, ambiguities, and paradoxes identified within the contexts of their rural school settings. Teaching is often naively thought to be a simplistic technical activity. In actuality, the classroom presents many ambiguities and dilemmas for teachers (Schon, 1983; Veenman, 1984). The complexities associated with teaching contribute to high attrition rates within the first three years of teaching (U. S. Department of Education, 1999). Teachers for children with special needs leave at about twice the rate as their regular classroom colleagues with annual attrition rates as high as 50% in some areas (White, 1999). Practical Knowledge About School Context New teachers often lack the ability to apply practical and reflective decision making to the context of their actual teaching (Abdal-Haqq, 1998; Agee, 1997; Clandinin & Connelly, 1986; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Lortie, 1975; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Stofflett & Stoddart, 1994; Weinstein, 1988). As Showers (1985) so aptly stated, "While all teachers can develop skill in performing a new teaching strategy fairly readily, the harder tasks come as the skill is applied in the classroom" (p.44). Application of teaching strategies requires knowledge of the contextual setting for applying the strategies. Novice special education teachers encounter many of the same challenges as beginning general education teachers (Boyer & Lee, 2001; Carter, & Scruggs, 2001; Conderman & Stephens, 2000; MacDonald & Speece, 2001; Mastropieri, 2001). However, connecting theory to practice may present more challenges for the special education teacher for a variety of reasons: the responsibility for a wide range of ages and disabilities, the difficulty developing professional communities with general education teachers, and the complex school change that the inclusion movement necessitates (Cross & Walker-Knight, 1997; Kilgore & Griffin, 1998; Putnam & Borko, 2000). Assistance with contextual knowledge about the school setting is particularly beneficial to the novice teacher (Bey, 1992; Ganser, 1996; National Center for Education Statistics, 2000; Odell, 1992; Villani, 2002). A valuable resource often accomplished through mentoring by an experienced teacher is the "tangible collection of insights about the culture and atmosphere of the new teacher's school and community" (Portner, 2003, p. 34). Utilizing experienced teachers to assist novices as they move into the role of teaching has a long history with more than 30 states now mandating teacher induction programs (Portner, 2003). Experienced teachers have a wealth of contextual knowledge about schools that can be shared with novices. Novices learn best from experienced teachers who are themselves professionally engaged, reflective, and analytical (Head, Reiman, & Thies-Sprinthall, 1992). Engaged teachers reflect deeply about how students learn and continuously question their practices in the classroom. Although Schon (1983) depicts reflective thinking as largely a solitary process, recent work on teacher reflection stresses the value of collective reflectivity. Teachers benefit from shared opportunities to articulate and critique their understandings about teaching (Clandinin & Connelly, 1986). Ideas become clearer when discussed with others (Solomon, 1987). However, reflection can be highly complicated and involves intuition, emotion, and passion not easily packaged as a set of techniques (Greene, 1986). …