Five Principles of Mentoring: A Seat at the Table for Everyone

If you’ve ever had a mentor—not just someone assigned to you to show you the ropes—you’ll always remember them, and chances are, your professional practice can be directly linked to what they taught you. I’ve been lucky enough to have several mentors throughout my career, but I do believe that it is those who support you in the very beginning who make the biggest impact. Way back in 1998, Sherry Fawcett, who was in the same stage of life I am in now, was my “cooperating teacher” for my student teaching. Mary Potter was the department chair, and since they were the best of friends, they adopted me. I’ve since had the opportunity to mentor over a dozen teachers myself in the “assigned to you” way, but there are a few teachers I have adopted over the years as well. As we head into the fall, it is important that we support our newest teachers, so if you are assigned or serendipitously meeting a new teacher, here are five principles that can help set the stage. If you are lucky, this relationship will be mutually beneficial, but every once in a while you just might find another work BFF. 

1. Respect diversity of experiences, expertise and knowledge

I’ll never forget having a student teacher who showed me how to “unmirror” my screen so that I could have the “Do Now” assignments on the Smartboard while simultaneously taking attendance on the same computer. He was magical. Another year, I learned about Restorative Circles from a teacher I was mentoring, and it has changed my practice dramatically. (Check out the Restorative Practices Collection here.) Both of these teachers were under 23, and they both had a million questions and leaned on me to survive some of the new teacher anxiety. I had the inside scoop on the school’s culture, expectations, and how they’d be evaluated, but they had a range of experiences that improved my teaching and enriched my life. If we can look at mentoring as a reciprocal relationship, the mutual benefit to the mentor and mentee is tremendous.

2. Learning looks different from generation to generation

I have flexible seating in my classroom; so, when you walk in, there often is someone lying on the floor, there are kiddos crammed onto a couch, and another student has a pile of cushions alone in the back. At first, this can seem chaotic or somehow not appropriately serious for an English language arts classroom; if you stick around, however, you’ll see that my students are really very productive, but it is off-putting unless you take the time to understand that this generation of students learn better in comfortable, differentiated and flexible classrooms. 

As a mentor coordinator for my district, I often use this example of flexible seating to help both the mentors and the mentees understand that learning looks different from generation to generation. Ask teachers what kind of learning environments they enjoy, and the answers might surprise you. I’ve recently found that those who graduated from college during the pandemic are actually shying away from technology in their classrooms because they had been forced to learn by Google Meet, while some of the veteran teachers embrace technology today when they had shunned it pre-pandemic. Many of us veteran teachers learned that strategically using technology saves a tremendous amount of time, provides data, and engages students. (A really interesting take on the need for mentoring post-pandemic can be found in this Hechinger Report.) From generation to generation, we are going to find that how we learn will change, and even more important, I think we are going to be seeing that what we learn changes as well. 

3. Building relationships takes time and is intentional, not incidental

Districts often assign mentors to their new teachers without a real plan on how their meetings should look, when they should meet, or what they should focus on. There are lots of different ways to support new teachers; but if we don’t begin with intentionality, any successes we see are more incidental. Awkward icebreakers aside, it is a good idea to spend some time together getting to know one another before the mentee needs your help. 

One of the best ways to ensure that the relationship develops is to set a specific meeting time that is prioritized. When you do meet, spend a few minutes not talking shop. Lean into the small talk, maybe grab a coffee, and try to allow yourself to open up a bit. Of course it’s going to be weird, right? But, it’s OK to push through that, and eventually you’ll both find a level of relationship that works. Like I said, I have had mentees whose relationship with me was strictly on the friendly professional level, but I have incredible friends who were first “assigned” to me as well. 

4. The greatest gift you give your “mentee” is to learn from them, too

As veteran teachers, it is sometimes difficult to meet a new teacher who has recently graduated, perhaps the same age as our own children, for example, and think, “What am I going to learn today?” This is shortsighted, of course, because most of us who have been around for a while know that the world is dramatically different from when we started. I just explained to my daughter, Zoey, (who is in her second year of college to become a teacher) that I didn’t have a phone or a computer or a whiteboard for the first five years I was a teacher. I had chalk. I didn’t think that I was deprived or anything because that was just how it was. Fast forward to now when I am constantly asking all the young teachers about how they use social media—I can’t seem to get the hang of TikTok, and my Instagram is underutilized. As their mentor, I can advise them on how to manage social media and what pitfalls to look out for, so we are both learning from our conversations. 

Here’s an example of a mentoring momentfrom Chapter Two, “The Social Media Dilemma” from my bookEverything New Teachers Need to Know But Were Afraid to Ask:

Mentoring Moment

After reading this chapter, use these questions to help you be intentional about your decisions and actions. Remember to ask questions, take some notes and explore the topic with a trusted friend, parent, role model or mentor. 

1. Have you ever felt harmed by social media? How did the situation happen? If not, how have you protected yourself from the negative aspects of social media? 
2. Do you have a professional social media presence? If so, consider how to boost your interactions. If not, think about ways to participate in your profession online. 
3. Is there anything in your personal social media that might need “cleaning up?” Are there any posts that you’d be better off taking down? How might you handle this topic in the future? 

Good conversations will happen when both the mentor and mentee have a vested interest in the discussion. By having guided discussions such as this one, both the new and veteran teacher can feel supported and learn from one another. 

5. You always believe the book is better than the movie

In this analogy, mentor teachers are the book, and the new teacher is the movie. What I mean by this is that no matter how hard any of us try, we are completely influenced by our own experiences, and most of us have strong opinions about the way our profession should operate. I don’t think we can help ourselves, so I always tell people that there are sometimes movies (the new teacher way) that are simply better than the book (the original). Yes, I am an English teacher, and yes, I know that is not a popular opinion. (This is a great conversation starter, by the way. The Princess Bride, Jaws, A Clockwork Orange and The Shawshank Redemption, to name a few, are better movies than books, in my opinion, of course!) 

The Hunger Games, for example, for me, was a much better movie than book because I don’t have the imagination to “see” science fiction worlds. I think this rings true for some of the things that new teachers do—I just don’t have that vantage point, so seeing them use a specific piece of technology or try a unique way to use stations can help me visualize and learn. The flipside of this analogy is true as well. Many “new” ideas that we see with our mentees are really iterations or 2.0 versions of methods teachers have used forever. It is often helpful to share with your mentee an early 2000’s binder that is shoved in your closet where the original version began. By sharing the “book” and “movie” version of things, we can help cross generational divides and improve teaching and learning. 

Veteran and new teachers alike head into the school year with anticipation, excitement, and a few butterflies. One of the best ways to protect the profession is to make room at the table for everyone and come together as a family willing to learn from each other. Do you have any good advice from your mentors?