An ISU English professor was recently awarded by Choice magazine for her book on mentoring.Donna Niday, assistant professor of English, is the co-author of “Mentoring Beginning Teachers: Guiding, Reflecting, and Coaching,” a book published last February.Stenhouse, the book’s publishers, submitted it to Choice magazine for consideration in the “Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Titles.” Niday said less than 3 percent of the 25,000 books submitted for consideration won the “Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Titles.””We didn’t even know it had been submitted, so it was a nice surprise,” Niday said. “My interest in mentoring goes back a long time — I did my dissertation on mentoring beginning teachers at U of I.”A mentor is someone who has had a minimum of three to five years of teaching experience, Niday said. A beginning teacher is either a student teacher or someone in their first, second or even third year of teaching.The term mentoring, as described in the title of the book, represents the approach of guiding, reflecting and coaching, Niday said. She said she observed mentors and beginning teachers for a year and saw both frustrations and success stories.”The easy way is for a mentor to say to a beginning teacher, ‘Well, what works for me is …’ instead of having them describe the problem,” Niday said. Helping beginning teachers see their problems in perspective by talking aloud and looking at possible solutions with their mentor is the goal of the program, she said. An important part of this is having regular consultation times for relaxed conversation.”It needs to be more than just superficial,” she said. “It needs to be deeper into teaching and reflecting.”Mentoring encourages beginning teachers to stay in the profession by offering support in numerous ways, according to the book.”Mentoring helps make the transition into teaching much easier,” said Ann Thompson, professor and chairwoman of curriculum and instruction. “We lose a lot of teachers in the first and second years.”Thompson said she hopes to “work toward assigning mentors so first-year teachers can draw on the expertise of experienced teachers and teacher educators.”Niday co-authored the book along with Joe Potts, English professor at California State University at Long Beach, Jean Boreen, assistant professor of English and Mary K. Johnson, English instructor, both from Northern Arizona University.The same four authors have started a sequel, “Mentoring Across Boundaries,” which, like the first book, will concentrate on mentoring in K-12 public schools. It will have an additional chapter on alternative, private and military school settings as well, she said.”I am working on a part about mentoring in technology-type situations,” she said. “[Technology] is a way for beginning teachers to show more of their talents.”