PhysTEC

Mentoring Strategies

Master Teachers are the best mentors for your preservice teachers and graduates. The value that a Teacher in Residence or any other experienced teacher can add to a preservice teacher’s education absolutely cannot be overstated. We offer you a quote from a PhysTEC mentee to a TIR:

You have always been a positive light in what has otherwise been a bleak time. Through all the stressful times and deadlines, you are a constant reminder of how a teacher should treat their students.  I want to be just like you when I grow up.  You rock!!!

  • Cal Poly TIRs led a weekly seminar to address preservice teachers’ needs in the classroom as well as provide career advice. In addition, the TIRs met with individual preservice teachers weekly to review lesson designs, observe lessons, and provide written and oral feedback which proved to be “a powerful tool in helping [Cal Poly’s] candidates improve.”
  • Arkansas TIRs helped preservice and graduated teachers with lesson design, formative assessment, and moral support during stressful times. The faculty report:

    The strongest mentoring bonds were those built between preservice teachers and a TIR. We hope to maintain some of this effectiveness through having preservice teachers actively engaged in our teacher alliance so that these early bonds can be formed. New teachers in the classroom seem to have too little time to build new bonds, but find it much easier to turn to someone with whom they already have a trusting relationship.

Use the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and other tools as formative assessments. A mentor can use RTOP as a starting point for a discussion of the elements of interactive, engaging teaching. Similarly, content assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory can serve to highlight persistent student difficulties that teachers are not addressing. Mentors who use formative assessments must be sure to emphasize that the purpose of the assessment is to help the teacher improve his or her craft, and not simply to “grade” the teacher’s performance.

  • Students in the Cal Poly science teaching methods course use RTOP to evaluate their own performance in videotaped teaching segments.
  • Colorado faculty used RTOP and teacher interviews to provide mentoring to beginning teachers.
  • Arkansas faculty report that “the RTOP instrument proved to be a useful point of discussion for mentoring, and significant gains were seen after preservice students and a new teacher were RTOPed, and after they reviewed the results.”

Use email, phone, and video conferencing to stay in touch with distant mentees. Many faculty at teacher preparation programs report that their graduates disperse to teaching jobs over a large geographical, making face-to-face mentoring difficult. Fortunately, we live in the age of electronic communication.

  • A Cal Poly TIR developed a blog on which graduated teachers could respond to prompts and comment on each other’s responses. This was replaced by a quarterly email, in recognition of the teachers’ time constraints.
  • Western Michigan and Colorado TIRs also use email and phone extensively as mentoring tools. Arizona faculty and TIRs added video conferencing, to provide that extra human touch. A Ball State TIR worked with IT staff from the university and his school to do “e-mentoring” and classroom observations over the Internet.

Make mentoring a major component of your Learning Assistant program. Mentoring is one of the ways you can enhance your Learning Assistants’ experience beyond that of a conventional TA.

  • Arkansas TIRs and faculty members meet Learning Assistants at a beginning-of-semester workshop, and provide mentorship throughout the semester. Faculty report that “strong mentoring of possible future teachers through their early teaching experiences, such as a learning assistant or TA position, can enhance their desire to teach, as well as their comfort level and effectiveness.”
  • Colorado has plans to develop a mentoring program for former Learning Assistants as they progress on the teacher preparation continuum.

Your TIR can mentor his or her replacement. This is an important way to give something back to a school or district that has generously agreed to release a master teacher, who is usually replaced by a less experienced teacher (perhaps a recent graduate from your program). Ball State, Arkansas, and Colorado have used this arrangement with success.

Your graduates can become mentors. Arizona program graduates who remain local are invited to serve as mentors for pre-service teachers after three years of teaching.