Overview
Professional Skills for Teacher Mentors – The need for strong, supportive and engaging teacher mentorships with younger colleagues has never been greater. There are certain skills and experiences required by a teaching professional before they should consider taking on a role of Mentor. Many of the duties that are required of a new initiate to the profession are daunting for the most seasoned of teachers. Recent studies have shown that a strong mentorship program combined with professional development opportunities for young teachers have found success in keeping attrition numbers low. However, there are a number of qualifiers that need to be identified to make a mentorship successful. We will outline those in the barriers to professional mentorship pages. Mentoring is the development of a relationship between a veteran individual and a newcomer to the profession. It is a reciprocal relationship with a clear goal: to ensure the professional advancement of the protege in their chosen profession while allowing for active reflection by the mentor participant who often notice a sense of rejuvenation from their participation. (Healy and Welchert 1990). These relationships have both biases and affordances that will come to light as the relationship naturally evolves. Like any relationship there is a cycle of experience, and one should be cognizant of what is required to successfully weather such ups and downs. A mentor teacher, needs to be well versed in what it means to be a professional educator and what skills are required to be an educator in the twenty-first century.
An Educator Skillset
Bova and Philips (1981) have provided a clear and simplified overview of the tools required by educators to be effective in the classroom. As a mentor, we also need to be cognizant of the skills required at different times in a new teachers first year as they cycle through the natural processes associated with growth. According to these authors the progression for new educators during the first year often follows a pattern of:
a. Anticipation
b. Survival
c. Disillusionment
d. Rejuventation
e. Reflection
During this first year, an educator will need a variety of tools and ways to implement them in a dexterous fashion. The main categories for these are as follows:
1) Mutual trust-building and creating clear expectations
2) Communication
3) Taking appropriate risks
4) Setting high standard short and long term goals
5) Observing other educators and implementing new expertise
6) Garnering familiarity with professional organizations and assuming the standards of your profession.
7) Understanding that your mentorship must come to an end understanding the natural disillusionment with mentoring.
(adapted from Bova and Philips (1981) Professional Skills for Teacher Mentors)
Focusing Understanding
At the heart of any mentorship program needs to be helping the newest, and perhaps most vulnerable, members of our professional body. The expectation is that they be able to successfully complete the tasks that are daunting to even seasoned professionals in a skilled and effective manner. The experience that a mentor brings to these new challenges and new experiences is without parallel. As a veteran colleague we are tasked with helping our proteges to develop the skills and implements prior to encountering the afore mentioned challenges.
Introductory Focus Reading
Shagrir, L. (2010) Professional Development of Novice Teacher Educators: Professional Self, Interpersonal Relations and Teaching Skills. Professional Development in Education. Vol: 36 Issue 12 Pages 45-60
http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/smpp/title~db=all~content=g929205193
Reflections
In the first chapter “Looking at Classroom Teaching and Learning”, Carl Glickman (2002) deconstructs what attributes are necessary to help teachers succeed and the school wide responsibilities they will have to assume during their initial year. He looks in detail at how classrooms have changed and forces the question at mentors, ” are you certain of what good teaching is?”
The key reflections to keep in mind as you work through these sections are as follows:
1) What do you feel the critical indicators of accomplished practice are?
2) Can you identify the educator skill that was your Achilles heel during year one? Or, is there a tool needed at your school specifically to overcome key challenges and hurtles?
3) Who was your first mentor and what skills did they help develop within you? What were the strengths and weaknesses of this early relationship and how can you balance that experience with the challenge of being a mentor in twenty-first century schools?
Interactivities
Activity #1 After watching “I teach, therefore you learn… or do you?” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AWYIit1uNk ] consider the following
* Contemplate your level of comfort with the idea of students’ needs and expectations being the driving force behind what influences education and the skills that educators need. What could the potential sources of problems be with such a decision? How will the education of the educators need to change to reflect a 2.0 classroom situation? Post you reflection in the discussion forum for your mentoring colleagues to consider.
Activity #2 Take a quiet minute to listen to the “Classnotes” podcast with Dr. Linda Cantu and Dr. Adela Solis
[http://www.idra.org/Podcasts/Resources/Coaching_and_Mentoring_New_Teachers]
Spending time with these new-teacher educational experts endows perspective for bringing new inductees into the profession and providing the right advice for them to be successful from day one. Using the Voicethread tool, listed as a button below this interactivities section, engage in a podcast conversation of your own with a colleague at school about the important skills for an educator at your site. Consider in your chat as well, how the right mentoring provides a positive continuation for the development of skills bridging the gap between leaving University and the initial years in the classroom.
References and Resources
List of References
Bova, B. and Philips, R. (1981) The Mentor Relationship. Retrieved Feb26, 2011 from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED208233
Glickman, C. (2002) How to help teachers succeed. Association for supervision and teacher development. USA. Retrieved March 2, 2011
Healy, C. & Welchert, A. (1990) Mentoring Relations: A definition to advance research and practice. The Educational Researcher. Vol: 19 No 9. pp.17 -21 Retrieved from EBSCO host. [February 11, 2011]
Shagrir, L. (2010) Professional Development of Novice Teacher Educators. Professional Development in Education, v36 n1-2 p45-60
List of Resources
Shagrir, L (2010). Professional Development of Novice Teacher Educators. http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/smpp/title~db=all~content=g929205193