Each year nearly 400,000 children in the United States are thrust into court through no fault of their own. Often these children also become victims of the United States' overburdened child welfare system. A Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer is a trained citizen who is appointed by a judge to represent the best interests of a child…

Year One of the 3-year Montana Beginning Teacher Support Program (BTSP) was conducted as a pilot study to investigate mentor-mentee pairing functioning under the study parameters as evidenced by a sampling of Montana participants, and to develop a manageable research model to be implemented during the second and third years of the study. The study…

Hospitals--the most costly segment of the health care system--are beginning to use benchmarking to discover how other hospitals and businesses have developed cost-cutting and time-saving ways of doing things. Benchmarking is a sophisticated, multifaceted procedure, usually conducted by teams, for identifying and adapting best-in-class practices.…

Although some research data support the view that a "caring learning community" is important to student outcomes, there is a lack of literature describing the administrative behaviors that create such a community. This paper describes findings of a study that identified the behaviors used by teachers to create a caring learning…

This guide describes a teacher mentor program for special education teachers in the Saint Tammany Parish Public School System, Louisiana. The Special Education Mentor Program provides peer support and professional development opportunities for new special education teachers. The program is intended to give immediate as well as long-term support to…

This paper looks at how cooperating teachers and student teachers interact and the effects, if any, on the student teacher. The study explored the cases of three student teachers and their cooperating teachers, focusing on whether the student teachers appeared to experience any positive or negative effects as a result of a matched pairing…

EQUIP is a new and effective program that motivates and equips them with social skills young people with antisocial behavior problems need to help themselves and one another. This book provides all the material needed for understanding and implementing the EQUIP program. The first chapter develops the rationale for EQUIP, introduces its basic…

This paper offers suggestions on how to help new teachers during their first year of teaching by offering a mentorship program with an established teacher on the school staff. A mentor is someone to whom the first-year teacher can turn during all the turbulence that is part of beginning any career, but especially for a beginning teacher in a…

Some minority and female students traditionally have not been given the help they need to enroll and succeed in mathematics and science classes. Now, however, a variety of approaches are available to give these students the extra attention they need. Parents can help children develop an interest in science and mathematics by: (1) identifying role…

This paper presents a course outline, a list of required readings, and procedures for "Narrative, Community, and Communication," an honors class at the University of Southern Mississippi. The paper explains that the course focuses on volunteer community service--the idea being to place the student in a setting of genuine need to help…

This report provides an overview of career counseling in vocational rehabilitation programming for individuals with severe psychiatric disabilities. It begins by reviewing the five basic premises for vocational counseling and programming and then discusses how adaptations to the traditional practice of career and vocational counseling might be…

The benefits to employers of employment policies and practices that explicitly recognize the increasing domestic responsibilities of current and potential employees were examined through a study during which data were collected from the following sources: previous research and existing sources of statistical information about demographic and…

Historically, women's problematic substance use has been largely ignored. For women to consume alcohol on anything but a restricted social basis, let alone have a substance use problem, did not fit into the stereotypes. Many programs that have been developed to deal with problematic substance use, have been developed from a solely male…

Taking as its guiding principle that through peer coaching new teachers can offer each other valuable feedback as they try out teaching techniques in the classroom, this book reports on a longitudinal study in peer coaching. The book aims to give teacher educators a new method for encouraging reflective thinking and professional growth in…

As part of a larger study to examine the usefulness of mentoring as an intervention serving at-risk youth, this study evaluated the implementation of two pilot programs in Saint Louis (Missouri) and Atlanta (Georgia). Both programs were at public agencies aiming to operate large-scale mentoring programs to serve adjudicated youth between the ages…