1. Trainee to visit different areas of the school to observe the many different staff working with the children in a variety of ways to support children's learning and development.
2. Confidential and supportive discussions.
3. Encourage trainee to lead mentor meetings
I always ensure that I make time for my mentee and to ensure that they don't feel like a burden on our extra workloads. Asking a mentee to meet with me first and lay down guidelines for us both over a time together. Try and get the mentee to evaluate own work and become reflective rather than looking towards me for an answer. Work towards goals together, out of discussions in meetings.
1) The first thing I would like my mentees to do is to observe good practice, both in the department and across the whole school. They need to familiarise themselves with behaviour management strategies, how lessons are structured and how to forge positive relationships with students.
2) Ensuring that mentor meetings are reflective and purposeful and that a thoughtful relationship of trust is established
3) To enable mentees to set challenging and personal goals in order to build on their knowledge and skills
Develop a relationship which is mutually respectful. Ensuring being an empathetic listener, not an emotional one. Encouraging the student to be reflective of their own practice and of the practice they are observing. My role is to ensure they see some of the best practice possible to extend their skills and delivering of engaging lessons which promotes a love of learning.
0 like1. Establish an agreement that it is a learning conversation.
2. Each conversation to start with the trainee's own views and then, through questions and discussion, look at the goals that they would like to work towards.
3. Ensure trainees learn from different staff within school so that they are sharing good practice.
1. Establish an agreement that it is a learning conversation.
2. Each conversation to start with the trainee's own views and then, through questions and discussion, looking at the goals that they would like to work towards.
3. Ensure trainee learns from staff within the school so that they are sharing good practice.
Asking my mentee to observe my practice and critique [not linked to standards] our discussion will lead to a developmental conversation. From that I will endeavour to put into practice what we have highlighted as areas for improvement.
Taking ownership of the learning space by having open conversations about changing any aspect they want from what has been set up at the start of term, such as seating plans. Allows the mentee to take real ownership of a space when they take on a group.
Planning lesson sections together to allow that supportive and collaborative approach that will model the relationship for the rest of the placement.
1. Effective mentoring will allow both myself and the student to gain an insight in how to improve our practice and ensure the resources are appropriate for the children.
2. Professional dialogue between the student and mentor should challenge the student to appraise themselves and also be respectful.
3. Understanding why different approaches work - the student should have opportunities to observe approaches that different teachers in the school use and be able to choose an approach which best suits them and the class that they are working with.
1. Effective mentoring of a student will enable a professional dialogue that is both respectful and that will challenge the student to appraise themselves.
2. The process will allow resources to be used effectively to help improve the practice of both myself and the student ensuring a challenging curriculum is planned.
3.Mentoring in our school will allow the student to gain an understanding of different approaches and strategies that could be used to enable a successful learning environment. Through mentoring meeting and discussions this will help guide my own practice.
It is important to build up a mutual respect between the trainee and the mentor several ways, 1. During a weekly mentor meeting - let the trainee speak and share their ideas and views and you just listen. 2. Always be respectful to each other and be sensitive to emotions that will occur in the fast paced teaching day. 3. Allow the trainee to observe different members of staff and do several pupil trails - different approaches work in different environments and different teaching styles can be observed. This will allow the trainee to see many models of good practise across different subjects. Also they can observe student behaviour and strategies for managing it.
To meet the framework, the strategies I would put in place are as follows:
1. I would foster productive learning conversations by asking my trainee to justify why he has made certain decisions regarding lessons. My trainee is very intuitive which is a real strength, however ultimately he needs a clear rationale for the activities he plans for students.
2. I would being feedback sessions with the trainee commenting on how he thought the lesson went, and why. I would always prompt the trainee to name at least two strengths before identifying a development point. This helps the trainee develop as a self-reflective practitioner.
3. To acknowledge the mutually beneficial nature of the mentor-trainee relationship, I would work with the trainee to figure out how to support the various needs of the classes we share.
Having read the Curee Mentoring and Coaching framework, it is clear that mentoring is a two-way growing process that involves both listening to the mentee and offering constructive feedback through target setting.
Firstly, I will ensure that my mentee has ample opportunity to reflect on their own lesson before I give my musings, and I will ensure that my comments are always fair and well-reasoned. Secondly, I will ensure that they have access to any resources/materials/further support if they need it. Finally, I will ensure that the mentee is always an active participant in their target setting and that they are fully aware of their next steps in their progress file.
Having looked at the mentoring and coaching information and attended a Warwick led CPD on developing mentoring as well, I feel that trust has to be built with your trainee, this should be done through discussion, learning walks of the areas in school together to see your professional feedback to other staff and letting them also see your own practice in the classroom.
Building a network of support with other colleagues within departments and across the school. Acknowledging the benefits form learning from all staff at various stages of their career and experience.
Listening to the mentees evaluation and thought processes to enable them to reach challenging goals to ensure continued development.
First ensuring that the trainee observes as many different members of staff as possible both within and externally to the faculty in this way they way be exposed to many different teaching styles as well as seeing how the learners respond to them. The observations would also include Direct Instruction and EAL classes too, as knowing what these involve will help the trainee when the pupils return to timetabled lessons.
Ensuring the relationship is honest and open and that all conversations are a two way dialogue between professionals and are non-judgemental. In this way the trainee will feel ‘safe’ and confident to express their feelings and any concerns they may have. Allowing for and encouraging self reflection, but also encouraging them to see the positives rather then dwelling on perceived negatives within a lesson.
Ensuring that when teaching the trainee feels ‘safe’ to take risks and try new teaching strategies. Prior to first teaching, making sure that enough team teaching has occurred and that the trainee is fully conversant with the learning and medical needs of the pupils in their class.
I think it's important to give your mentee the opportunity to experiment with their ideas, which will then give them a stronger awareness of the effectiveness of specific strategies. As well as reflecting on areas of improvement, it is important to achieve a balance and acknowledge their particular strengths in a lesson for them to feel confident and aware of their current assets. Thirdly when introducing a new strategy I would review this with increasing expectations over a number of sessions. For example, when using a whiteboard activity as an assessment strategy, the first task would be to administer the whiteboard activity in a ordered manner. Then upon reflection, you would question the mentee the effectiveness of the activity and how much they were able to gauge the class' understanding, what could have been better etc. Next, you would then advise them to address a couple of misconceptions in the next lesson during a whiteboard activity and continue assisting them in building that strategy.
1. Trust is key. Building up an honest relationship where mentor and mentee are able to speak openly yet respectfully is important.
2. Observing others help mentee to visualise what might work/what might not work in action away from the research/theory/discussion. This can then be discussed as to why it might work/might not work in the context that we are planning for and how we could work together to adapt practice.
3. Ensuring that the mentee has the confidence and value to take risks and experiment with ideas/research to see for themselves what will work with reflection.
Allow a more reflective journey. Keep notes on positives and negatives of each session.
Able to discuss strategies for behaviour management openly, encouraging the trainee to adapt the classroom to her chosen layout
simplify the overly complicated information given to ensure retainment, often during my training I felt lost with the random (at the time) abbreviations and code terms.
Firstly, I would encourage the trainee to observe as many different teaching styles/age phases around school as they can. Everyone has a different style of teaching and interacting with the children and it can be difficult if you are placed in a class where the class teacher's style is very different from your own. During observation feedback, I would try to get the trainee to be as reflective as possible so that they can lead the discussion, prompting where necessary. In my experience, trainees can sometimes focus on the negatives too much so making sure they leave the discussion knowing what they did well is important.
