Mentors Can Help Low-Achieving Schools Garcia Elementary School teacher Cathy McConkey works on lesson plans with University of Iowa student teacher Robyn Hopkey

INDEX OF ARTICLES School Audit to Generate Change Better Coordination of Data Could Help Students Audit Finds Several Upsides Parents Missing Link to Classroom Success Students not Accelerating in Advanced Placement Classes Grades and Perfomance Don't Match, Audit Finds Rialto's Differences Outweigh its Similarities to Other Schools District Committed to Making Better Readers Schools Focus on Elementary Reading High School Classes make a Shift Back to Reading Teaching English Takes Valuable Class Time How did individual schools stack up? Click Here and find out!

Sometimes all a promising new teacher needs is a mentor, someone who is encouraging, helpful and who has great ideas worthy of emulating.

"For Rialto, it has really been a very successful program," said Cathy McConkey, 37, a mentor teacher at Garcia Elementary School, a campus that is within Colton's city limits.

"We're able to service new teachers in a lot of different ways, through support and assessment, we offer after-school classes, in-services and workshops. Teachers have lots of opportunities through the mentor program. And we give support to any teacher that asks."

Like the Rialto district's 50 other mentor teachers, McConkey was elected for the role by her peers. She gets a stipend for the extra hours and effort she puts into teaching teachers to teach better. Networking is essential.

McConkey and Hopkey explain the lifestyle of a butterfly.

"We all have our own rooms and it's nice to have the opportunity to collaborate with each other," McConkey said.

"There's a trick with kids and in building a rapport with them and with their parents. You have to have that three-way thing with them. . .. I always want to have a positive contact with the parent before I have to contact them for a negative reason. So you find a strength within that student; you sent home that positive note. If we don't all work together, the system isn't going to work."

The audit of Rialto Schools recommends the district encourage its mentor teachers to seek assignments on campuses that have the greatest concentration of students with limited skills.

"We're always looking for ways to refine and make the service and support better," said Michael Brown, assistant superintendent for instruction. "One of the issues is that sometimes there's a concentration (of mentors) on one campus. It's kind of the luck of the draw. A major way we could improve that program is to spread their services throughout the district."

There may be some "teacher association issues," Brown said. The union is unlikely to approve changes in the program that would require mentors to move schools.

But the district could consider changing the way mentors are selected, he said. They could ensure that each of the district's 27 campuses has one or two, for instance, instead of some campuses having clusters of six or seven and some with none.

Rialto's campuses are well mixed in the number of students with limited English skills and with those at greatest risk of failing, both Brown and McConkey said. So the study authors' recommendation to move mentors to lower achieving campuses probably will be ignored.

"I don't know that that's something for Rialto to be concerned with," McConkey said. "We're pretty evenly distributed for kids at risk and socioeconomic (status) is across the board."

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