12 minute read
WHAT DO MENTORS GET FROM MENTORING?
Rediscovering enthusiasm
The vast majority of us entered teaching because we wanted to provide young people with the best possible start in life through giving them quality education. However, there is always a danger when we’ve been teaching for an extended period of time that we begin to lose the wide eyed enthusiasm that we started our teaching careers with. Mentoring a trainee teacher can change all that.
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Trainees want to change the world and have the fi erce determination to do so. Their positive energy can revitalise even the most jaded of teachers. With this unbridled enthusiasm comes fresh ideas and perspectives. Yes, some of those ideas may not always be successful but harnessing that energy and using it to motivate the class can have a signifi cant impact on both pupils and mentors. Trainees bring a level of excitement to the table that is often contagious and reminds us why we entered teaching in the fi rst place.
Building collaborative relationships
Building relationships is a key part of teaching. Not just with our pupils but also with our colleagues. Having those strong working relationships really is an integral aspect of our professional practice. The journey of mentor and trainee should be a shared one that encompasses collaboration and learning. We want to get the very best out of our trainees and ourselves. A strong relationship will help facilitate this. There is something very special about watching a trainee teacher grow professionally and knowing you have been part of their journey.
There are two important components to a good mentor/trainee relationship. These are congenial relationships and collegial relationships. Whilst the congenial relationship focuses on the more personal aspects in terms of feeling part of a team, the collegial element of the relationship is centred upon professional interactions. It is discussing teaching practice, the sharing of knowledge and promoting success of both parties.
Ultimately, the mentor/trainee relationships can last a lifetime. I am still in contact with the majority of the trainees I have mentored and it has been a joy seeing them establish themselves in the world of teaching and knowing I had a small part to play in it.
Giving up control
This is one that many mentors can initially fi nd hard! During my fi rst year as a Mentor I was working with an excellent trainee but I found it diffi cult to share my classroom. Don’t get me wrong, I loved so many aspects of the mentor experience but giving up classroom control was a learning experience for me.
Up until that point everything had been done my way. The classroom was set up just how I liked it, I had my routines, and my way of doing things. However, I quickly realised that in order for the trainee I was working with to succeed I had to share the class with them, rather than see myself as the one solely in charge. This was challenging to begin with but it allowed me to grow in ways I wouldn’t have considered.
Giving a new teacher the space to experiment with new strategies allowed them to develop and also gave me the chance to see diff erent techniques in action - some successful, some not. Of course some things didn’t work. What is important to bear in mind when this happens is that they are still a novice at this stage and need to be given the chance to develop their practice.
What was particularly powerful was refl ecting on these experiments together; refi ning and changing. This provided the opportunity for rich professional dialogue and forced me to refl ect on my own practice.
Having a trainee requires you to think more deeply about your own practice. A good trainee will always have lots of questions. Though they can sometimes be overwhelming, particularly when you have a million plates spinning on an average day, they do force a certain amount of contemplation for us as mentors.
How do you assess effectively in the middle of a class input? What does a good seating plan look like? How do you get the class to line up so quietly? Often, trainees will ask questions about things that are second nature to experienced teachers. For us, assessing children during a class input is almost like muscle memory. It is part and parcel of our daily routine. Sharing your thinking with a trainee requires you as the mentor to think more deeply about what you do on a daily basis.
This reflection in some cases can be transformative. It forces us to reflect on the choices we make, the strengths and areas for development and reminds us that we too are still developing.
Giving back
Something I love about the role of mentor is it gives us a chance to give back to the teaching community. I am passionate about teaching being one of the very best jobs in the world. We are entrusted with something incredibly precious - the learning of the future generations.
If we want to ensure they are getting the very best teaching we need to make sure we are providing them with the best possible teachers. I see being a mentor as one way of playing my part in this. I won’t lie, working with a trainee can increase workload but the benefits more than make up for it.
We are able to share with trainees our knowledge, skills and expertise to help shape their teaching practice and it is a true privilege to be entrusted with this task.
PEDAGOGY
22. Hands Up For Hands Down
What does cold-calling look like in the classroom?
27. Teaching The Art Of Redrafting And Editing
How do they differ? How should we teach them?
33. The Importance Of Modelling In Primary
Why modelling is the unsung hero of teaching strategies and how we can maximise it.
PEDAGOGY
HANDS UP FOR HANDS DOWN
Should students put their hands up to answer questions in class, or does that cause more problems than it solves? A “No Hands Up” policy may not be the answer, as Adam Boxer explains.
By Adam Boxer
I used to work in a school that started a “no hands up” questioning policy. There was an understandable concern that in many lessons the same few students were always being chosen to answer questions, and that a number of students might have fallen under their teachers’ collective radars. The policy didn’t work and was abandoned after a couple of weeks. As a very early career teacher I remember struggling with it myself, though at the time I couldn’t really articulate why.
Looking back with the benefi t of hindsight and a bit more classroom expertise, it’s pretty clear to me that this policy was well-intentioned, but fundamentally fl awed for a number of reasons. These reasons can shed light on what e ective CPD can look like and perhaps how policies aimed at improving pedagogy can be better designed.
First, a blanket policy like this fails to distinguish between di erent types of question. If I am asking students a free recall question about something I taught them last week, or the homework they were supposed to do, then a “no hands up” approach is the right route. Students should know the answer, so you should be able to pick any of them. However, if it is a question regarding which students might be a bit shakier - perhaps I am pushing their learning forward, or appealing to opinions about something just covered - then picking students who quite reasonably do not know the answer can feel a bit unfair. So, choosing students with their hands up in such a circumstance doesn’t ignore everyone else, it just acknowledges that not everybody is expected to have an answer to this question at this time.
Secondly, it came with very little training about how to implement it. It’s all very well saying “don’t let students put their hands up,” but that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improving pedagogy around questioning. What should I do if I pick a student and they don’t know the answer? What should I do if nobody knows the answer? What should I do if a student says to me before the lesson that they really don’t want to be picked? How should I talk to the class about the way I am questioning them? What scripts can I use to build confi dence in students who aren’t used to speaking up in class? What phrases can I use in a case where a student gets an answer wrong and I want to thank them for being willing to give an opinion but also make it clear that it’s wrong? How do I respond to the student who is just desperate to answer every question and becomes more and more frustrated that they aren’t being picked? At what point should I not do questioning like this and should I use miniwhiteboards instead? This level of detail is rarely considered when discussing new strategies, but it leaves teachers entirely underprepared for classroom implementation.
Thirdly, there was limited analysis of the reason why we were making such a change.
There are a number of plausible reasons for this kind of questioning, which all have direct ramifi cations for classroom use. For example:
1. REASON: picking
students with their hands up gives you unreliable information about class understanding as they are the ones most likely to know the answer.
RAMIFICATION: ask
one of your weaker students the question. If they get it right, you can make a decent assumption that most others know it too.
2. REASON: picking
students with their hands up does not ensure that every student feels like their voice is heard.
RAMIFICATION: across
the course of one or two lessons, make sure that every student answers at least one question.
These two ramifi cations might not be entirely mutually exclusive, but they are defi nitely in confl ict. Do I want to make sure every student gets the chance to ask a question, or do I want to target questions towards students that will help me get a better picture of whole class understanding as it builds over time? Without being explicit or clear about our reasons, we run head-fi rst into such confl ict.
PEDAGOGY
For me, an additional – and perhaps the most important - reason to advocate questioning like this (which is called Cold Call in Teach Like a Champion) is to communicate to students that any one of them could be directly called upon at any point in the lesson, and to therefore increase the number of students who are thinking during your questioning. If students know that not putting their hand up means they will never get asked, they won’t bother thinking. But when they know they could be asked at any time they stay on their toes. Explaining this principle to sta means that they can start employing a number of other strategies in the service of the same goal (like bouncing back to a student who got an answer wrong earlier). This kind of intertwining of the “how” and the “why” of questioning is a much better route to improving pedagogy.
PRIORITIES
- Make sure your strategy is not a blanket policy and has enough nuance to cope with a range of situations.
- Make sure you have given teachers enough concrete guidance to be able to implement it in the messy reality of the classroom. - Make sure that you are crystal clear on the reasoning behind the strategy, that you communicate that reasoning and that is has guided and informed the fi rst two points above.
Don’t just take some idea you saw fl oating around online or heard at a conference and impose it on sta .
TEACHING THE THE ART OF REDRAFTING AND EDITING
When students can successfully edit and redraft their own work, they can make astounding progress and produce incredible work. Christopher Mann takes us through how he teaches those editing and redrafting processes to his students.
By Christopher Mann
