Teachers Academy - School of Education
Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network
Welcome to the Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network!
The Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network is a partnership project of the Teachers Academy at UNCG. Created in the spring of 2006 through a grant from the Wachovia Corporation, the Teacher Mentoring Network was established to recruit, prepare and support a network of educational mentors from the school districts in the Piedmont Triad region over a three year period. By 2009, 141 mentors from eleven districts were participants in the project.
The Teacher Mentoring Network is designed to accomplish three goals:
- To increase teacher retention for both novice teachers and mentor teachers
- To provide quality professional development for mentor teachers
- To increase student achievement in the classrooms of novice teachers
Partner districts selected mentors to participate in the project from a pool of qualified candidates. These mentors then participated in a number of professional development activities, including week-long Teacher Mentoring Institutes during the summer, periodic follow-up meetings at the district level throughout the year, an online community and listserv, and follow up professional development institutes during the school year and summer. Mentors were expected to meet with their mentees at least weekly. At least twice each semester, the mentor conducted classroom observations of the mentee with time for constructive feedback and discussion.
The Wachovia Teacher Mentoring Network was dedicated to continuing the work of the Teachers Academy to develop and support caring, collaborative, and competent professionals beginning with the induction process and extending throughout the teaching career. Members of the network continue to work with UNCG as clinical faculty, cooperating teachers, mentors and professional development facilitators.
For additional information, please contact Project Coordinator, Christina K. O'Connor, at ckoconno@uncg.edu or 336.256.1082.
Partner Districts:
Alamance-Burlington School System (www.abss.k12.nc.us)
Asheboro City Schools (www.asheboro.k12.nc.us)
Chatham County Schools (www.chatham.k12.nc.us)
Davidson County Schools (www.davidson.k12.nc.us)
Guilford County Schools (www.gcsnc.com)
Lexington City Schools (www.lexcs.org)
Randolph County Schools (www.randolph.k12.nc.us)
RockinghamCounty Schools (www.rock.k12.nc.us
Surry County Schools (www.surry.k12.nc.us)
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools (http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us)
Yadkin County Schools (www.yadkin.k12.nc.us)
Participant Links:
Mentoring resources:
- The New Teacher Center at UCSC www.newteachercenter.org
- NC DPI Mentoring and Orientation Resources http://www.ncpublicschools.org/recruitment/beginning/
- US Dept. of Education What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching http://www.ed.gov/pubs/FirstYear/index.html
- ASSIST Online http://assist.educ.msu.edu/ASSIST/index.php?tab=4
- The Mentoring Leadership and Resource Network http://www.mentors.net/