Dear Shalom -
I would like to share with Rabbi Jeff Kobrin the way funds were used for professional development when I was running a peer mentoring program at the Northwest Yeshiva High School in Seattle over a decade ago. Under the tutelage of the principal Rabbi Bernie Fox, we operated with two foundations of effective teacher growth. Those are, 1. it needs to be personalized, and 2. it needs to be ongoing. To that end, we identified a couple of teachers who showed a lot of promise but were quite new and would benefit from mentoring, found them a fellow teacher who was then trained as a peer mentor using the ASCD program “Another Set of Eyesâ€, and put together a schedule for meetings and classroom observations. An important aspect of the program is that both mentees and mentors were paid for their time participating in the program. We were very happy with the program and feel it had long term positive consequences in terms of professional development. I will be happy to provide more details upon request.
Mark Smilowitz
Machshevet Yisrael Teacher
YTA Girls High School, Jerusalem
