I have frequently had the privilege of mentoring teachers who are
new to the profession and it is certainly an aspect of my role that I really
value - and I know that not all mentors do. I have learned more about
teaching from my role as a mentor than from almost any other CPD
experience. Observing a new teacher's lessons forces you to reflect on
your own practice. Sometimes you will see things that new colleagues do
that you could incorporate in your own teaching. Certainly, feeding back
on other people’s work forces you to reflect more critically on your own work
No matter how much my own teaching benefits from me being a
mentor, the main task is to nurture a young professional. My best advice
is that you have to start the process from where they are and not where you
would like them to be. Before a new PGCE student's first lesson I will
tell them that however it goes, that is their starting point and we will move
it on from there - and all first lessons will be different. It is crucial to identify what a trainee’s
initial steps will be in improving their practice – and these next steps will
be different for different trainees.
One of the main skills of a mentor is knowing how to encourage
your trainee to move on. I am certain that I could write a huge list of
suggestions after that first lesson, and if I concentrated on everything that
was wrong with the lesson I could crush a fledgling career very quickly - but
that would serve no purpose. The trick is to use your judgement to decide
which is the most important aspect, or possibly two aspects, that trainee can
work on and improve first. Once these aspects are improving, then it will
be time to move to another aspect or two. For some colleagues, progress
will be faster than it is for others and that is absolutely fine.
The progress rate of trainees can be frustrating for
mentors. There are always times when progress is really rapid and this is
really satisfying for the mentors. This is often followed by a period of
little or no progress which is when a mentor can become frustrated. In
fact, this is usually the time when the previous rapid progress is being
embedded and it is a necessary part of the process. With most trainees,
after a short period of slow progress, another period of rapid progress
follows. If you drew a graph of progress against time, it would look a
little like a stair case; it would have periods of rapid growth followed by slow
growth, with the process repeated several times.
Expert experienced teachers are reflective teachers. Reflection
is an intrinsic part of being an expert teacher and it is important to start
building this characteristic early on in a new teacher's career.
Initially, trainees will need help with reflecting on their work and
asking questions that are too open or too closed will not be helpful. It
is very important that trainees reflect on their successes. As a
profession we are very good at focussing on what needs to be improved and we
are not so good at recognising what we are good at. I am convinced that
we all need to recognise our successes, new trainees especially, and then it is
easier to look at what needs to be improved in a positive way. Initially
the key questions to ask trainees are: what went well, and secondly, what do
you need to improve. That second question can be tweaked to, what is the
one key thing that you need to improve. As time goes on and the trainee
has more experience of teaching and observing more experience colleagues, I
change the second question to, what could you do to improve the lesson.
As always, it is far more powerful if the trainee can learn to solve his
own problems.
At the start of the process the mentor will be driving the process
quite hard. Over time this should change
and with a good trainee, by the end of the process they should be driving
it. Remember, all trainees are different
and they all progress at different rates and need help with different aspects
of their work. They are all individuals
with their own strengths and weaknesses that they need to work on.
One final piece of advice that I would like to add. Don't
forget where you came from. Once upon a time all mentors were
inexperienced teachers with a great deal to learn once.
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