Building the Best Faculty: Strategies for Hiring and Supporting New Teachers.

The competition to hire the best teachers probably will intensify in future years, meaning Building the Best Faculty should be required reading for anyone responsible for carrying out the recruitment duties.

The author, Mary C. Clement, has plenty of professional experience as the director of field experiences and student teaching at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga.

Clement includes a wealth of information in 14 chapters about recruiting, interviewing and hiring practices and helpful hints about staff development for new and experienced teachers. The case studies included in the book focus on classroom management, teaching strategies and other areas. She also includes tips on mentoring new teachers and providing them with essential support services.

The text benefits from discussion questions as well as a summary of key points at the end of every chapter.

Building the Best Faculty should be helpful to principals, human resource officers and superintendents as a supplement to their existing search and hiring practices. Those at universities who prepare administrators can use the book as a springboard for discussion and role playing about how to hire the best employees.

(Building the Best Faculty: Strategies for Hiring and Supporting New Teachers by Mary C. Clement, Scarecrow Press/Technomic Books, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Md. 20706, 1999, 176 pp. with index, $36 hardcover)