In this article, ELA and urban teacher educators who have been long-time advocates for and users of young adult literature in their work with beginning English teachers re-think the cultural constructs of "black and brown" adolescence that undergird the genre and guide their work.

During the last several years as a teacher educator mentoring new teachers, the author has worked on two programs of research that included ways of focusing early-career teachers on students and their learning. These research programs shed light on needs of new teachers and ways mentor questioning and processes of classroom inquiry can have an…

Novice teachers often find themselves isolated; they are often assigned students with the most difficult challenges, with no mentor, and without professional learning to further develop the skills they began to acquire as student teachers. It is important to disrupt the institutionalized isolation of the novice teacher (Darling-Hammond and Sclan;…

There is an alternative to conventional teacher mentorship. The authors describe and analyze a promising model of mentorship where multiple mentees and mentors, each with varying levels of experience, engage collaboratively in the study of teaching practice. They have found that well-designed contexts in which beginning and experienced teachers…

Offers observations and comments on what makes a good mentor at the middle school level from several experienced and novice English language arts teachers. (SR)

How can we prepare and encourage new teachers to take on the challenge of changing traditional views of literacy education? Teacher educator William Kist shares a first-year teacher's story of incorporating new literacies within an eighth-grade alternative classroom.

Explains a method for assisting preservice and new teachers in their understanding of James Moffett and Betty Jane Wagner's classic work, "Student Centered Language Arts, K-12" (1992). (TB)

Offers (from the perspective of a first-year teacher) five guidelines to student teachers to help make their student teaching semester more useful and enjoyable. Includes a response from a veteran English teacher. (SR)