The Wish List: Articulating and Responding to New Teachers\u27 Concerns

Although it is possible to cite general trends about the concerns of beginning teachers, each beginner will have specific needs and questions. Clearly, mentoring matters, and mentors are especially helpful when they recognize and attend to the beginners\u27 specific needs. Here, ErinnvBentley describes a Wish List she developed as a novice teacher which she used as a method for clearly and specifically documenting skills she wanted to learn. This list contained both general teaching skills and those particular to her teaching context. Throughout her first years in the classroom she used the Wish List as a personal professional development guide: continually referring to the list, adding new skills or concepts, and systematically looking for mentors for guidance. (Contains 1 figure.