Enabling
Enabling New Teachers
. . .this phase is the implementation phase of the learning relationship, when most of the contact between the mentoring partners takes place. It is complex. Although it offers the greatest opportunity for nurturing, learning and development, the mentoring partners are also most vulnerable to myriad obstacles that can contribute to a derailment of the relationship."from Zachary Lois J. (2000). The Mentor's Guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, p. 52)
Three Ways to Enable New Teachers
Support!
Create a supportive learning environment
Build and maintain the relationship
Challenge!
Monitor the process
Evaluate progress
Envision!
Foster reflection
Assess learning outcomes
Strategies for Leading a Learning conversation
Asking Questions
Reformulating Statements
Summarizing
Listening for the Silence
Listening Reflectively
Showing/Telling
Zachary Lois J. (2000). The Mentor's Guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
What Beginning Teachers Can Expect
The following phases in the teaching life of a beginning teacher are based on several researchers' delineation of "stages" for learning to teach. These are not separate and distinct stages, but complex and overlapping, depending on the individual and the particular teaching context. Mentors and beginning teachers who understand that these are typical phases in the learning-to-teach process can make productive decisions about how to work together. Click here for a printable planning sheet to help you think about how to best support your beginning teacher colleagues.
When Teachers Begin Learning Their Craft
What Mentors Should Think About. . .
Early Idealism
Focus on relationships with pupils; role is seen as something that just happened without a great deal of effort.
New teacher needs to see lots of models and demonstrations…of lesson plans, classroom management systems, record-keeping systems, demonstration lessons—with conversations about why and how you make the decisions you do.
Disillusionment, Disappointment, Frustration
Focus on what is not going well, even if they are relatively small or insignificant. Every frustration seems overwhelming.New teachers need to understand that all teachers experience frustration and disappointment but that they can learn planning and problem-solving strategies that can help them take control of seemingly hopeless situations. They need to feel powerful and need to know where they can find resources to help. A wise mentor once said, “Just keep breathing.”
Personal Survival
Reactive rather than proactive; letting the children define the situation. Focus is often on classroom management.
Support and co-planning is useful now, with conversations about how students respond, what some alternative decisions might be, what goes right and what could be better. Just-in-time help to solve problems is critical. New teachers need to hear about their strengths as well as talking about their targets for improvement.
Dealing with Difficulties
Trying to replicate what they believe to be teacher behavior—acted on their procedural understanding of what it means to be a teacher; spends many hours planning, but reluctant to differentiate for pupils’ individual needs.
The key at this stage is to support effective planning to avoid problems. Mentoring activities can productively focus on differentiating among student responses and the effective of teaching decisions on different students.
Hitting a Plateau
Showed little appreciation for relationship between teaching and how students learn; more confidence in abilities but still focusing on procedures—“acting like a teacher”
At this time, the new teacher is experiencing some success. The temptation is to do just enough to keep things moving along effectively, but missing opportunities to enhance student learning and deal with less obvious challenges.
Rejuvenation
After getting a handle on the daily routines and procedures, the new teacher makes time for rest and focusing on successes. Often happens during or soon after winter holiday.
Celebrate with the new teacher, and help them focus on specific evidence about what is happening and how things are going.
Moving on--Choosing a Reflective or Non-reflective Path
At this phase, beginning teachers needed to be “moved on” to understand the role and responsibilities of being a professional educator; needs support in evaluating beliefs in terms of their own practice and in terms of students’ learning.
This phase calls for less obvious personal support and more challenge to focus on student learning processes—on the role of assessment in reflection and planning. This is the time to support new teachers in developing their personal style and to encourage ongoing professional development.
(Adapted from Furlong, J. and Maynard, T. (1995).Mentoring student teachers: the growth of professional knowledge. Routledge: London, p. 76).
Ask Open-ended Questions
When you ask a new teacher, "What do you need?" the answer you will most often hear is "Nothing, I guess..." Novice teachers often do not know what they need, nor do they know how to ask the questions. Here are some questions that can trigger some powerful learning conversations. . .
- How do you think the lesson went?
- Why do you think it went the way it did?
- How do you know that was the reason?
- When you did this. . .the student reacted by. . .Why do you think that happened?
- What did you expect would happen when. . ."
- Were there any surprises?
- Help me understand what you took into account when planning this particular activity.
- I noticed that you altered your prepared lesson plan during this activity.
- If you could teach this lesson again, what, if anything, would you do differently?
- Why?
- What conclusions can you draw from the way the lesson went?
- What conclusions can you draw from our conversation today? (p. 46)
- Avoid embedded negatives. Rephrase the following questions to remove any negative overtones.
- "Can’t you come up with a better way to do that?"
- "Why didn’t you see that you miscalculated when you planned to have students exchange seats?"
- ‘That probably won’t work. Do you have any idea of what you might do instead?" (Portner, p. 47)
Possible Mentoring/Coaching Topics
The challenge for Coaches and Mentors is that they are so skilled that they aren’t aware of potential problems for beginners, and they sometimes aren’t even aware of the strategies they use. It may take some reflection and analysis to make their strategies explicit and clear enough for a novice to understand and learn from them. These are some issues that are problematic for beginning teachers.
1. Classroom management
2. Organization of Instruction
3. Time management
4. Curriculum planning
5. Curriculum knowledge
6. Working with colleagues
7. Instructional materials
8. Relationships with parents
9. Evaluation, Grading, Reporting