ABSTRACT
Recently, my career has taken me down a road that is a bit off the more traditionally beaten path for those in higher education. Being a firm believer in university faculty involvement in and connection to the field, I have found myself traveling to and from and in and around multiple public school districts across the northern tier of my state as the coordinator of clinical education for a large university teacher education program. The ivy-covered tower image of the detached and bespectacled college professor surrounded by volumes of yellowing books is waning away as the era of professional development schooluniversity partnerships emerges and more and more of my colleagues engage in new roles emphasizing the integration of theory and practice. In encouraging conversation and collaboration between university and district professionals in authentic school settings, the concept of mentorship rises on the horizon as educators think about new paradigms for novice and veteran teachers to adopt as they work together. Although the master-apprenticeship concept still dominates the cooperating student-teacher dyad, some search for new, more democratic
metaphors with which to describe the relationship between emergent and experienced teachers. I have encountered literally thousands of articles on mentoring in teacher education that describe hundreds of programs across the country claiming to use mentorship, and hundreds of others discussing the mentoring process to which they ascribe. It has become the trend in teacher retention and induction programs.
