The Arkansas Department of Education Office of Teacher Quality, in collaboration with the Administrator Mentoring Advisory Committee, has developed a new Arkansas Administrator Mentoring Model. This project was undertaken for two main reasons: (1) to address the number of days out of school buildings for mentoring and training requirements, and (2) to make the content of the training more relevant to the administrators’ assigned work positions.
Instead of having a separate Beginning Administrator Training in July and another in September, AAEA and ADE have collaborated to incorporate the Beginning Administrator content training with the annual AAEA conference on July 30, 31, and August 1, 2012. Mentors who have never been trained before and the new beginning administrators will receive the initial one-day training starting on the morning of July 30. This session will run until 3:00 pm, and will end in time for the opening session of the AAEA Conference. Novice administrators may attend the break-out sessions and general sessions at no cost, however, novice administrators MUST still register on the AAEA website. There is no fee for the mentors to attend the one-day training for mentors; however, mentors will have to register on the AAEA website and pay to attend the AAEA conference.
The AAEA Program Guide will have a directory of all break-out sessions. The Administrator Mentoring Advisory Committee will advise beginning administrators as to which select sessions are more targeted to the needs of a beginning administrator. There will be a large number from which to choose. To meet the requirements of the Mentoring Model beginning administrators must each attend a total of six of those sessions during the three-day AAEA conference.
This information is being supplied at this time in order for beginning administrators and their mentors to begin to make plans for the summer. A future Commissioner’s Memo will contain further details.