Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 132: The Mentorship Mindset: Build Trust and Transform Your Teaching

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Ep 132: The Mentorship Mindset: Build Trust and Transform Your Teaching · New Teacher Talk

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Hello and welcome to New Teacher Talk,
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where we bring you essential conversations and tips to
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support aspiring and early career teachers.
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Whether you teach in a big city, a small town,
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or anywhere in between,
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we are here to help you succeed in your classroom.
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Hello, my name is Mary Ellen Friel, and
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I am a National Board Certified Teacher in Exceptional
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Needs.
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I retired from teaching full-time and now am mentoring
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National Board candidates along with the pleasure of
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mentoring teachers through Edifying Educators.
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Right now, I am working with two teachers from Baltimore,
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Maryland.
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Previously, I was able to work with teachers from Texas.
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I am also one of the 3NBCTs who provide personalized
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professional learning to educators and National Board
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candidates.
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Today, I'm gonna talk about embracing mentoring.
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I hope you leave with one thought and two important skills
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to keep in mind as you embrace mentoring.
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So what does it mean to embrace mentoring? Well, to me,
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to embrace mentoring means that you see the work as an
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investment in your practice and your development as a
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professional.
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Sometimes mentoring relationships are required, a
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condition of employment or completing your state
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certification.
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If you see the mentoring as compliance,
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you're not embracing it, but you are complying with it.
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You're going with the flow.
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You don't fight it,
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but you don't reflect and open yourself to it.
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You go through the motions, you fill out the forms,
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you meet with your mentor or mentee,
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you give responses and so on.
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That doesn't mean things can't change,
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that you can move from complying to embracing.
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When you see mentoring as part of your development and
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influencing your ability to impact your students,
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you are embracing.
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Now this embrace goes both ways, mentor and mentee.
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So how do you begin to embrace mentoring?
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You can't embrace something just by disposition or wish
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position alone.
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You don't embrace what you're not connected to.
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Embracing mentoring starts at the relationship.
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Relationships are at the core of mentoring,
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the core of our shared human experience.
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The pairing of mentors and mentees is often based on need
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an/or experience.
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In the beginning, especially,
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there's often a power dynamic.
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The mentor knows more,
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and the mentee needs to acquire knowledge.
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The mentor has experience,
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and the mentee needs to utilize that experience.
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Does the mentee have an instructional need?
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Is the mentee a new hire with experience educating other
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students, or is the mentee a new educator?
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So initially the relationship might not feel like a
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partnership.
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It might feel uneven,
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but I believe to embrace means both for the mentor and the
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mentee, embracing the work, each one benefiting,
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each working for the benefit of students.
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How do you set the tone for this embrace?
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Setting the tone starts at having a shared purpose for the
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mentoring.
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Having that conversation between mentor and mentee is
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important.
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To me,
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the shared purpose should always come back to the students.
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Should always be about impacting the students' learning.
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But to really embrace, we need to trust each other.
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I believe it falls on both mentor and mentee to begin to
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set the tone of trust from the start.
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The mentor needs to take the lead initially, perhaps,
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but both own the outcome.
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Getting to know each other as individuals, as adults.
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What are your hopes, your concerns, your background?
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This time investment gives context to later conversations,
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too.
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One cannot have difficult conversations unless you can have
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small, everyday conversations.
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However,
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it's important that both mentor and mentee understand why
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this getting to know you period is important.
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Why sharing general information about each other matters
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and why it helps us meet our mentoring purpose,
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impacting students.
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This is about building trust.
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If we don't know each other as people,
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how can we share practice?
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Trust takes time to develop.
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As a mentor, I'm asking the mentee to share their hopes,
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concerns, weaknesses, ideas.
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As a mentor, I'm gonna be listening to struggles,
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successes,
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and sharing feedback and options with the mentee.
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How can a person do this without trust?
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Starting to know each other as people is a start,
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but it's also important to discuss that purpose.
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So this conversation might be initiated by the mentor or
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the mentee.
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When I know a purpose, I know how to engage better.
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I know where I'm going.
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So both of these actions,
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the getting to know you as an individual and knowing the
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purpose, sets the trusting tone from the start.
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This mentoring time is about engagement in the work,
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about impacting kids.
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And speaking of time, I just wanna do a side note here.
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Being punctual matters,
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especially for the mentor in the beginning. Not showing up
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or being habitually late to meetings that agreed upon times
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can be a deal breaker or a mentee in the beginning.
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Being on time and communicating when obstacles occur in a
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timely manner is an important habit.
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That way,
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mentees see your commitment and see how you view mentoring
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as important.
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This can change that view of mentoring from compliance to
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embrace.
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So now that we've kind of talked about these dispositions
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and building trust,
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what are some of the skills you need to develop to assist
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in embracing mentoring?
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Well,
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embracing mentoring means developing your skills of active
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listening and giving feedback.
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So first, active listening.
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We hear about active listening,
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and we all agree it's important, but do we listen actively?
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That's an ongoing question for each of us.
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An underlying principle of active listening is also
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assuming best intentions from the speaker,
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especially in mentoring.
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This is important.
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Sometimes when we communicate in an unclear manner,
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and this could be because we're nervous,
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this could be because we're new to the practice,
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we could be creating some impressions that may or may not
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be how the speaker feels.
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Assuming best intentions mindset pushes you to seek to
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understand instead of running up the ladder of inference.
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This mindset keeps you open to new perspectives and can
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lead to a productive conversation instead of a positional
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conversation or an adversarial conversation,
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ruining the trust.
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Having a best intentions mindset is grounded in empathy,
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that willingness to see another person's perspective,
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that leaving judgments aside by relating to feelings and
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acknowledging those feelings.
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Word choice also plays in here too, so be careful.
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Let's do an example.
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This happened to me.
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One mentee was always referring to the barriers faced by
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ELL learners, especially newcomers.
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The conclusion to me felt as if the mentee had just
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accepted these barriers.
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There was nothing to do about them.
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One just had to accept them.
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Now that was me climbing that ladder of inference, right?
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So the first thing I did was I began by acknowledging the
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frustration of being the teacher of someone facing these
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barriers,
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that feeling of not having power to change the barriers and
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the feeling of frustration you feel as a student struggles,
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and you're not sure what to do about it.
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Then, as the mentee and I began to unpack this,
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and I sought to understand what she meant by barriers and
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what she meant and who are these students,
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this led to the conversation becoming more about strengths
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of the students as individuals,
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followed by the needs that the students have individually.
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Then we were able to have conversation around how to
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leverage these strengths while supporting the needs.
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I think the mentee left with actionable steps instead of
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those feelings of acceptance or hopelessness of frustration
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toward the barriers.
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The mentee left with a plan of what she could do to help
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alleviate these barriers.
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Now active listening has nonverbal cues, too.
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Nonverbal cues such as keeping your body open with arms
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uncrossed, open hands, relaxed muscles, relaxed tension,
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slightly leaning forward toward the speaker and nodding is
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appropriate.
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All of these things can show that you're following the
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conversation.
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All of these nonverbal cues show you value what the
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person's
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saying. As both a mentor and mentee, we need to keep in mind what our body is doing and what we want it to communicate.
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The second skill I'd like to talk about is giving and
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receiving feedback.
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I'll start with giving or the mentor,
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and then discuss receiving.
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Now when a mentor gives feedback,
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say on a lesson or a situation, again,
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you can feel that power imbalance.
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The mentee may feel that they know less or they've done
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something wrong.
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So I'm just gonna do whatever you tell me.
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This is why trust is so important.
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It's also important to keep in mind for both mentor and
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mentee that the sharing of your thoughts and feelings
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matters and often the sharing can lead to better outcomes.
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So be engaged, embrace the moment, again,
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why relationship and trust is so important.
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So after setting a mutually agreed upon time and place
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along with the purpose of the feedback, for our example,
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let's just use, you wanted feedback on a created organizer.
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Here are the five steps that I would use.
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I've seen other frameworks with more steps,
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but this is what I find.
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I'll describe each step for the mentor and then I'll
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describe it for the mentee.
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Remember being engaged in mentoring takes both of you.
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So the mentor first, first start with active listening,
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seek to understand.
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In our scenario,
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the purpose of this meeting is to give feedback on an
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organizer created by the mentee.
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I would start by asking the mentee,
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how do you feel about this organizer?
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What do you see going on with it?
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Tell me what you want me to know about it.
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Hopefully at that point, the mentee would respond.
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I would then want to repeat back what I heard.
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It is important that you make sure that we agree on what
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we're saying.
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So I'd want to repeat that back,
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or I might want to ask clarifying questions.
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Then I'd always want to go back and summarize that
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explanation and then ask for that confirmation that what
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I'm saying is correct.
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This shows not only respect,
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but it also clarifies any misinformation or misconceptions.
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So important.
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So give this step the time that it needs.
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This is also a spot where your think time and your wait
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time might come into play.
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Again, though, as you're working,
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be aware of that body language.
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Is it saying something like, hurry up?
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Are you feeling tense?
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Check in with it.
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Make sure it's communicating what you want it to
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communicate to.
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The second step after I've heard the perspective from the mentee around this organizer is I'm going to share what I saw or heard. I
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want to keep these responses as actions,
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as something evidence, right?
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So I might say something like,
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I see that you have 15 questions on this organizer.
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Now as the mentor,
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it's important for me to then seek to understand.
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So after I've shared my observations,
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it's important that I understand the mentees thinking
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around them, the rationale, right?
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Their perspective.
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So for example, with the 15 questions,
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I might ask the mentee about it, and they might say to me, W
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ell,
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I included 15 questions because after all these are ninth
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graders.
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Or they may say something like, Well,
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all 15 really relate back to my goal.
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And I might follow that up with a little more information
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so I can better understand this alignment that they've
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created.
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I want to keep it around the students and their learning.
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And I want to keep it around what I saw as I seek to
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understand.
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This is also where some active listening would play in too.
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I may summarize what I heard the mentee say and get
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confirmation that I'm correct.
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Once I feel it, I've gotten that confirmation.
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I may offer my feelings.
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Offering your feelings of how perhaps difficult it can be
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to create an organizer from scratch.
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Or I might offer my feelings that some of your struggling
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students may feel overwhelmed by all of those questions.
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Mentees do want to know what you think.
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They want your opinion.
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But if you don't make sure you understand the context
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first, as in the previous step,
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you might not get that reflective moment that you're
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looking for.
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So once they share all of the feedback and the mentee has
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had an opportunity to respond,
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we're going to want to talk about options.
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So for the sake of argument, let's come back and say,
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the mentee has told me that the 15 questions are necessary
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because not only do they relate to the goal,
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but they offer her some insight into what needs to be
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retaught before the unit final exam, right?
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So we might talk about then maybe, well,
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what are some other ways I can get that input into what the
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students know before the final exam, right?
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This becomes a bit more of options,
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brainstorming ideas than maybe thinking through pros and
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cons, right?
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You might even share an idea that worked for you.
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But at the same time, as all of the sharing is coming out,
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be understanding if some of these options are not a fit for
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the mentee.
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If you notice that their body language is kind of bristling
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or perhaps confused by one of them.
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The last step,
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once you've kind of gone through all of these options,
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is space.
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And space is important for both the mentor and mentee.
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Space gives that chance to reflect and time for both to
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think about it in a respectful way.
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Sometimes we just need space to let an idea or thought
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simmer.
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We're not always ready to move it to that next step.
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If your mentee needs space,
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then we really suggest that we meet soon,
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perhaps in a day or two,
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and we give ourselves time to really reflect and decide
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what makes sense.
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So now that we've looked at those steps for the mentor,
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let's look at what the mentee is doing.
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So when the mentor is actively listening, so is the mentee.
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That's their first step too.
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They're sharing what they believe is the purpose of the
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meeting.
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Again, mentees, if you're not sure, ask,
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and think about your body language and the ladder of
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inference for you and being open to sharing perspective.
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This is why trust matters because when I trust you,
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I am more open.
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So again, if the mentee is asked, you know,
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what were your thoughts around your organizer?
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You know,
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why did you decide to create the organizer the way you did?
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They can share that thinking behind it.
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And they're not afraid to say things like, Well,
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I had seen a previous organizer we used with the same
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format that went really well.
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So I wanted to use that format for this assignment.
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And that's what I was trying to do.
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So when you hear it again,
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the mentor may then summarize what you said,
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it's up to the mentee then to listen and respond to listen
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and confirm that that summary is correct.
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So we're all on the same page.
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So as the mentor shares their observations, again,
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another moment of active listening.
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When they finish,
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the mentee can say back to them any clarifying questions of
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things they didn't understand or things that they want more
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detail on.
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In our example of this organizer,
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perhaps the mentee wants to say,
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I'm not sure what you mean by alignment to the goal.
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So this moment helps us both unpack our thinking,
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helps us both slow down.
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As you know,
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teachers do about a million things before lunch.
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So sometimes our actions have been decided so quickly that
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we're not even able to articulate all the thinking that
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really went into it.
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So this slowing down is very helpful.
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Once you've set it back and you've clarified what these
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observations that you heard from your mentor,
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then the mentee needs to offer their perspective.
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While you've heard what the mentor has seen,
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such as the 15 questions on the organizer,
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and maybe they share that they think it's a lot for your
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struggling students to get through,
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here's where the mentee could offer their perspective.
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And at that point, they may say, yeah, you know,
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it could be really hard for them.
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I think maybe,
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maybe I should highlight the ones I want them to know,
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or maybe there's something else I could have done to make
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it easier for them.
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Or they may say, I know, and I know they struggle,
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but I'm not really sure if I can go with any less questions
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when I've got to get them ready for this unit test.
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I don't really know.
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So then at that point, we both go into options.
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So now we've kind of also clarified what it is we want to
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offer options on.
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And maybe it is around these struggling students and having
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15 questions.
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And here,
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both are putting out ideas and asking clarifying questions.
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So far, if we've narrowed it down to where our thought is,
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is 15 questions too much for struggling readers,
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and we start throwing those options out there?
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Well, is there a way it could be read to them?
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Is there a way it could be a Google Doc,
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and they could listen online with, you know,
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text-to-text to voice?
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Is there a way that you could highlight the important
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questions?
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Is there a way that you create two sets of questions and
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the struggling or all kids could choose which set they want
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to answer to?
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So, this also is a place, especially for the mentee,
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where you need to let the mentor know if an option doesn't
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feel right, or comfortable, or even doable in your class.
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So take that option that we threw out there about having
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two sets of questions, and they could choose.
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Maybe they don't feel comfortable because to them it looks
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like that you're really watering down the assignment,
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or they're not comfortable because, well,
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then how will I know if they need to know these things for
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the test?
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So this is when the mentee should be sharing those things
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so we can continue to brainstorm and come back with a way
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that works for this class, this teacher, and these kids.
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Last is taking space.
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If you're a mentee and you're just feeling overwhelmed or
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you're really not sure of your own next step,
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this is a point where you just need to say, C
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an I mull this over?
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Can I take some time?
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It is always okay to say I need time to think.
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Can we meet later?
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I hope you have enjoyed our time together as much as I
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have.
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I'm leaving you with my thoughts around the importance of
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building trust through actions and words.
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We need to clarify that purpose of mentoring,
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which to me is impacting student learning.
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We need to build trust by knowing each other as
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individuals.
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This trust must start from the beginning in order to
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embrace all that mentoring can offer.
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The two skills to develop are active listening and
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feedback.
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I offered my thoughts on seeking to understand as a
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mindset.
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This is so key to embracing and mentoring.
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When we understand, we can be more effective.
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I also offered a five-step process for sharing feedback for
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both mentors and mentees.
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I'd like to thank you for listening,
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and I hope you found one idea to embrace mentoring.
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Thanks for joining us for today's episode of New Teacher
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Talk.
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