Preservice Resources

What Is My Role as a Mentee?

What do I hope to get out of the mentor/mentee relationship?

This exercise is simply meant to help guide your thinking as you prepare to participate in this relationship. By identifying what your expectations are before you begin, you will be able to identify what plans and processes will need to be put in place in order to ensure that you meet as many of those expectations as possible. It will also help you to articulate your expectations to your partner in this relationship. Click here to view the exercise.

Mentor Connection

How do you currently find appropriate matches for mentors? Are the same one or two people doing all the mentoring? This survey may help you collect information about the teachers working on your staff to determine the ways in which they may want to participate in a culture of mentoring.

Promoting Reflective Practice

One of the goals of working in a culture of mentoring is to model professional reflective practice. The Ontario College of Teachers has put together a Resource Kit designed to foster professional inquiry. The following exercise may be helpful as a springboard to develop such inquiry as a ‘habit of mind'.

Critical Incidents in Teaching

1. Briefly tell a story from your practice that you consider to be significant. Describe the incident in terms of what happened, when, where and how without revealing names or identities. Identify the special attributes of this incident that set it apart from all others in your experience. Outline what you would do differently given a similar incident in the future.
2. Review the incident as you have written it and compose a list of questions using the following points to guide you.
   • How your current knowledge and understanding of subject content, curriculum and resource
     materials is sufficient/insufficient to help you deal with the incident
   • The adequacies and inadequacies of theoretical knowledge with respect to performance during
     the critical incident
   • Your current repertoire of teaching strategies and techniques
   • Your current understanding of the Standards for Professional Practice
   • The adequacies and inadequacies of your current knowledge and understanding of classroom
     management strategies and techniques
   • Your strengths and weaknesses in working with a diverse student population including working
     with special-needs learners
   • Your current ability to cope with issues of race, gender, class and multiculturalism
3. Review the questions with your mentor/mentee to identify areas where you feel you need further instruction, resources and guidance.
4. Develop an action plan that will ensure that you are able to get support in the areas identified together.

Providing Feedback to Your Mentee

The way in which you provide feedback to your mentee says a great deal about the relationship that you have nurtured. These suggestions may help you think through some issues ahead of your meeting time in order to make your feedback meaningful, thoughtful and constructive.

1. Recognize that there may be a level of anxiety associated with these meetings. Take the time to make some positive comments. Set the stage by modeling a self-assessment of your own teaching, and inviting your mentee to raise questions about your teaching.
2. Determine what the mentee already knows/feels about the object of your feedback. For example, if you were observing a lesson, begin by demonstrating good listening skills, and respecting their (evolving) ability to assess their own development. Consider asking:
   • How did that lesson go from your perspective?
   • At what point were the students most engaged in their learning?
   • Were there points where the students' body language led you to believe they were less engaged?
   • What might you do differently?
   • What did you learn from this experience?
3. Address the strengths of the lesson. Do this as a way of both offering support and encouragement but also as an opportunity to discuss what you may have learned from the mentee from what you observed. Ask questions about the thinking that went into the decisions that were made in the planning and execution of the lesson.
4. Address the weakness of the lesson. Focus on the instructional points, and demonstrate a willingness to work together to improve those areas. Provide examples of how you overcame the same or a similar weakness in your teaching. Ask your mentee what strategies he/she has for restructuring or reconceptualizing the lesson to improve it. Provide further strategies, resources and ideas to assist with this.
5. Review and summarize what you both gained from the feedback discussion and what your next steps will be.

Mentor/Mentee Discussion Points

There is a great deal for someone new to a school, division or teaching to learn. The following list, while comprehensive, is certainly not complete. It does offer ideas to help stimulate discussion and to help think about areas of focus. Rather than reviewing the entire list at one time, consider anchoring discussions around one area at a time.