Mutual Mentoring for Mid-Career Teachers

Mentoring is for teachers across the career span! In this helpful resource, authors Karen Weller Swanson and Micki M. Caskey show how mid-career mentoring can rejuvenate your joy of teaching, plan for career progressions, and build a healthy work-life balance. The authors lay out a framework for mutual mentoring that uses a trekking metaphor and a choose-your-own-adventure style, which allows for individualized professional development focusing on topics most important to you. Through this approach, you will learn how to create a community of practice with other teachers, how to engage in dialogue about teaching and exchange ideas, methods for productively responding to challenges, and ideas for learning new skills and revising or abandoning practices. The authors also cover how to establish healthy boundaries, create a sustainable practice, and implement plans to achieve professional goals. With this book, mid-career teachers will be able to thrive in a mentoring space that creates opportunities for them to embrace innovative and collaborative practices and explore their evolving personal and teacher identities.

Karen Weller Swanson, EdD, was a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction. She has mentored teachers in master's programs at George Mason University and the University of Nebraska. Karen was the Director of the Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction program at Mercer University. In this role she mentored doctoral students in research, writing, and career development. Karen has served on the board of the Association for Middle Level Education and as Chair of the Research Advisory Board and Editor of Research in Middle Level Online. Karen also serves on the board of the Colorado Association of Middle Level Education. She is currently an eighth-grade science teacher in Colorado. Micki M. Caskey, PhD, is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at Portland State University. She specializes in mentoring teachers in professional practice, middle grades education, and doctoral education programs. She has experience as an associate dean for academic affairs, doctoral program director, writing coach, and teacher educator. She is a co-series editor of The Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education and The Handbook of Resources in Middle Level Education. Micki is a former middle school teacher who taught in urban settings for more than 20 years.

Part 1: Wandering 1. Mutual Mentoring: Teacher-Friends 2. Self-Directed Learning: Trekking with a Partner or Solo 3. Communication: Dialogue, Conversation, and Good Talk 4. Practice: Going Deeper and Moving Forward Part 2: Exploring 5. Resilience, Transformative Learning, and Teacher Identity 6. Packing, Unpacking, and Repacking 7. Critical Thinking, Passion, and Work-Life Balance Part 3: Venturing 8. Preparing for an Adventure 9. On Our Way 10. Looking Back, Looking Ahead