to remind them that the mentoring process is still ongoing and that you are still invested in their success. These informal visits may even allow you to encourage promising teachers toward master’s or doctoral programs in music education at your institution. According to teachers, “relationships with university faculty” comprised a large part of the positive influence toward returning to school for advanced degrees. In one research study it was found that merely being contacted and encouraged by faculty members in the graduate school application process made a appreciable difference.15
Even we as teachers, mentors ourselves, may feel the natural urge to seek comfort in the knowledgeable countenance of one who has walked the path before us. For the teacher who has chosen to work in the capacity of a college professor, being a mentor to undergraduate and graduate students is a given – and infinitely satisfying—part of our job descriptions. Yet as we mentor others, our need for mentoring continues. To develop a career as a researcher, one needs the support of colleagues to learn to navigate the world of preparing and publishing original educational research. According to researcher LeBlanc, the period after completing the dissertation is a crucial time in which a career as a researcher is “make or break:” if the young professor doesn’t continue to research, write, and publish in those first few years of a career in higher education, it likely will not happen at all.16
During this critical
period, experienced professors could do well to check on their former students and offer advice and encouragement on how best to negotiate the competing responsibilities for teaching and research production. As Geringer quoted Goethe, poet and scientist, in his MENC senior research address, "If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be, he will become what he ought to be and could be."17
As I progress in this profession called teaching (but which may be more accurately described as teaching/ learning/teaching/learning in an endless loop) I am indeed finding that my need to seek mentoring has not decreased, as I perhaps expected. My needs have changed, of course; the day- to-day checkups are no longer necessary (although I do miss Dr. Don Hamann stopping by my door and “innocently” inquiring, “what have you written today?”). But even as I grow into my role as tenured professor, I still have not become my mentors’ replacement. Instead, I need them more than ever: a
48
proofreader, a cheerleader, someone with whom to discuss ideas.
As a wise former professor of mine told me recently (thank you, Dr. Wendy Sims) “your mentors are for life.” Call on us, she told me. Use us. What a relief to know that I don’t have to continue walking the path alone, that the mentor/mentee relationship doesn’t end at graduation. Perhaps, then, rather than a life-cycle model of mentoring in which a teacher grows up and “pays it forward,” the process is more of reaching back as well as reaching forward. Just as music making is a more powerful experience in a group, music teaching can have greater power when you draw on the experience of others.
Her words changed not only the way I approach my mentors, but also how I encourage my students and former students. I am pledging this academic year not only to reach out to the graduates of the last few years, beginning their careers in local school classrooms, but also to lean on my current mentors and perhaps cultivate new ones. In a profession such as teaching, which so depends on the connection between individuals, no teacher can afford to make one’s self an island. To quote professor Halford E. Luccock, “You can’t whistle a symphony; it takes an orchestra to play it.”18
Do you have a promising student who could use some support or an opportunity? Do you have a colleague in the early stages of their career, whatever the level? Be a mentor, pay it forward; lend an ear, lend a hand. But don’t forget that your mentors are still available to you as well: watching, cheering you on, and welcoming the opportunity to connect. Forward, back, forward, back... your mentors are for life.
References:
1Maryann Jacobi, “Mentoring and Undergraduate Academic Success: A Literature Review,” Review of Educational Research 1991, 61: 505-532.
2
Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World (New York: Vintage 2013) 178.
3
J. E. Blackwell, “Mentoring: An action strategy for increasing minority faculty,” Academe 1989, 75: 8- 14.
4
E. A. Fagenson, “The mentor advantage: Perceived career/job experiences of protégés versus non- proteges,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 1989, 10: 309-320.
5
Maryann Jacobi, “Mentoring and Undergraduate Academic Success: A Literature Review,” Review of
Educational Research 1991, 61: 505-532. 6
Clifford K. Madsen and Steven N. Kelly, “First Remembrances of Wanting to Become a Music Teacher,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2002, 50: 323-332; P. Cox, “The professional socialization of music teachers as musicians and educators,” On the sociology of music education ed. Roger Rideout (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997) 112–120.
7
Robert Gillespie and Donald L. Hamann, “Career Choice among String Music Education Students in American Colleges and Universities, Journal of Research in Music Education 1999, 47: 266-278.
8
Daniel S. Isbell, “Musicians and Teachers: The Socialization and Occupational Identity of Preservice Music Teachers,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2008, 56: 162-178.
9
Daniel S. Isbell, “Musicians and Teachers: The Socialization and Occupational Identity of Preservice Music Teachers,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2008, 56: 162-178.
10
Daniel S. Isbell, “Musicians and Teachers: The Socialization and Occupational Identity of Preservice Music Teachers,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2008, 56: 162-178.
Patti J. Krueger, “New Music Teachers Speak out on Mentoring,” Journal of Music Teacher Education 1999, 8: 7-13.
11 12
Lisa DeLorenzo, "Perceived Problems of Beginning Music Teachers," Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 1992, 113: 9-25
13
Patti J. Krueger, “New Music Teachers Speak out on Mentoring,” Journal of Music Teacher Education 1999, 8: 7-13.
14
Colleen Conway and Al Holcomb, “Perceptions of Experienced Music Teachers Regarding Their Work as Music Mentors,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2008, 56: 55-67.
15
David J. Teachout, “Incentives and Barriers for Potential Music Teacher Education Doctoral Students,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2004, 52: 234-247.
16
LeBlanc, A. “1992 Senior Researcher Award acceptance address,” Journal of Research in Music Education 1992, 40: 180-184.
17
John M. Geringer, “On Publishing, Pluralism, and Pitching,” Journal of Research in Music Education 2000, 48: 191-205.
18
Katherine Karvelas, Winning with Teamwork (Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press 1998) 31.
Dr. Virginia Wayman Davis is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Texas – Pan American.
October/Novemberr 2014
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