Gordon College hosted a Conference for Mentor teachers on the Evaluation of New Teachers. The conference was held on May 15, 2017. It was the third meeting of mentor-teachers who are responsible for supporting and guiding Gordon's new teachers.
During the event, we presented Proteach project to the mentor teachers, faculty members of our department for continuing professional development and teachers from the school, which is integrating the MIT during the next year of 2017-18.
Prof. Ditza Maskit who gave the keynote lecture of the event spoke about the challenges of evaluating new teachers within the mentoring processes and Dr. Ornat Turin presented mentor-teachers as they are characterize in various movies.
Both presentations were fascinating and concretize the perceptions of the mentor-teacher's role as a profession.
Some insights from Prof. Ditza Maskit's lecture:
In Israel, most of the new teachers successfully pass the evaluation processes of the induction year. Research shows that the mentors are considered as the most significant figures in terms of supporting and evaluation processes, and that there is diversity in the evaluation processes themselves and especially with the people who take part in this evaluation. It is essential to have a more meticulous definition of the essence of evaluation in the induction year and of the tools that will be used to evaluate the teachers. (see also Nasser, Frsco & Ricenberg, 2006)
We hope that the Proteach project will contribute new insights to the role mentors teachers takes with training new teachers during induction.