The Mentoring Resource Collection is a curated hub designed to support mentors, novice teachers, and educational leaders. With a comprehensive array of free resources, templates, and tools, Just ASK empowers educators to foster meaningful, sustainable mentoring practices in schools and districts.
The 21st Century Planning Process
(Featuring the SBE Ovals)
Don’t miss the October 2021 Mentoring Memo which features an eleven-minute video clip titled “The 21st Century Planning Process.” Two New York teachers explain how the use of the SBE Ovals and the power of using both qualitative and quantitative data as planning and assessment tools. To further support your use of the 21st Century Planning Process Paula has included in this memo an amazing array of links to Just ASK books with page references, online tools and templates, selected newsletter issues, and a few of her favorite website resources aligned with that work.
(Tantalizing Tidbit: While we titled the clip “The 21st Century Planning Process” it could also be titled “Don’t Cross the Line!” HINT: You will need watch the clip to understand that key point in the process.)
This clip can be used in one-of-one conferences or in staff meetings… actually in any format of mentoring, coaching, or supervisory work. It would be especially useful in addressing a common “teacher trap” of falling into activity level thinking rather than focusing on learning standards and student application of their learning. Don’t miss this one.
The Just ASK
October 2021 Mentoring Calendar
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Each issue of The Mentoring Memo features one or more mentoring calendars for the current time of the year. The Just ASK October 2021 Mentoring Calendar is now available. These calendars, excerpted and updated from The 21st Century Mentor’s Handbook, offer suggestions for mentoring actions to support novice teachers and teachers new to the district. When you take a look at them, you will quickly see how useful they are. Post them, or a link to them, on your district/school website and feel free to forward the calendars to colleagues who you think might find them useful. You are also encouraged to post them on social media. |
Messages for New Teachers
In this Just ASK video, there are inspirational and funny quotes for new teachers. Enjoy it yourself and then share it with colleagues. See more videos below
Distance Learning Collection
The Just ASK Team has written new articles and updated some older ones as 2.0 versions to support our many colleagues who are tasked with creating positive and productive learning experiences from a distance and/or in hybrid or face-to-face environments that are ever evolving. A special thanks to Marcia Baldanza for sharing so many powerful stories from her work as a professor, K-12 educational leader, and mom and for providing us with dozens of amazing and helpful links. Feel free to share with colleagues near and far.
The Mentor’s Opening of School Checklist
Our Mentor’s Opening of School Checklist that provides in great detail far more suggestions that you can ever implement. As you read through this checklist, note those that seem well matched to your protégée(s) needs and implement them. If you are not the person who is interacting directly with novice teachers and teachers new to the district, be sure to send this checklist to those who are. To ensure that the right people have this valuable list, post it or link to it on your district/school website.
Categories of assistance and support include:
- Personal
- Professionalism
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
- Organizational Systems
- Students
- Working with Colleagues
- School and School System Policies and Procedures
- Parents and Community
And, since the developer has a special education background, there is also an Especially for Special Educators section.
Top Ten Tips for Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century
We are offering you access to one of our favorite tools for working with new teachers. Not only are we providing you a PDF copy of our Top Ten Tips for Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century cross-referenced to the 2nd and 3rd editions of Why Didn’t I Learn This in College? and to Instruction for All Students, we are also providing you a 30-slide PowerPoint Show to use in elaborating on those tips in either individual or group settings. Just ASK consultants use these handouts and slides across the country in our work with both new and veteran teachers.
To use these tools in a group setting, have the new teachers bring their texts with them to the meeting, provide each attendee with a copy of the Top Ten Tips, and use the companion PowerPoint Show. Have them create visual representations, jigsaw the questions, create three-column charts, or any other active engagement strategy you want to model. You have in your hands an instant winner!
Access the Top Ten Tips and the Top Ten Tips PowerPoint Show by clicking on the graphics below. Select the version of the Top Ten Tips PDF that matches your protégés’ books.
PowerPoint Collection on Reflective Questioning
We are sharing with you an amazing “you-can-use-this-tomorrow” collection of PowerPoint slides on reflective questioning that will be handy for your own learning and use in workshop settings or one-on-one coaching sessions with colleagues. Developed by Just ASK Senior Consultant Brenda Kaylor, our resident coaching guru. (If you don’t believe me, just ask the educators in Kildeer Countryside School District 96 in Illinois or St. Vrain Valley School District in Colorado!)
Don’t miss the opportunity to check out this slide collection. For more information, if you can access a copy of Creating a Culture for Learning: Your Guide to PLCs and More, you will find that pages 56-68 provide powerful information about what we at Just ASK call The Three Cs which include coaching (with reflective questioning), collaborating, and consulting.
Mentoring in the 21st Century Slideshow
We have selected two dozen slides from the extensive collection of PowerPoint slides that we use in our Mentoring in the 21st Century workshops and institutes and are making them available to you.
Access the slideshow by clicking on the graphic below.
Online Tools and Templates
Why reinvent the wheel? We are happy to provide you with over 60 online Tools and Templates you can use in your mentoring work. To make your task of identifying which tools might be most useful to you right now, they are organized into these categories:
- Tools for New Teachers
- Tools for Mentors
- Tools for Peer Observation and Data-Driven Discussions
- Tools for Instructional Planning.
Access these tools in one of two ways.
- Go to the Just ASK Resource Center and click on the red apple icon
- Go to The 21st Century Mentor’s Handbook page and click on the green button that reads “access online tools”
Mentoring Moments Collection
Click on the Graphics To Use and Share
Mentoring in the 21st Century e-Newsletter
Access the 17 archived issues of Mentoring in the 21st Century® and use them in multiple ways to support your mentoring work. This e-newsletter written by Paula Rutherford, Just ASK Senior Consultant, is copyright free; we encourage you to reproduce it to share with novice teachers and mentoring colleagues as you wish. Just ASK consultants frequently use them in onsite workshops and institutes. This e-newsletter is no longer published so only archived issues are available.