Mentoring 101

Found in Scholarship and Professional Development > Mentoring

Source: Portner, Hal, Mentoring New Teachers, Corwin Press Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, 1998.

Distinctions between the role of mentor and evaluator:

Mentoring is collegial; evaluating is hierarchical.
Mentoring is ongoing; evaluating visits are set by policy.
Mentoring develops self-reliance; evaluating judges performance.
Mentoring keeps data confidential; evaluating judges performance.
Mentoring uses data to reflect; evaluating uses it to judge.
In mentoring, value judgments are made by the teacher; in evaluation, they are made by the supervisor.

The Four Mentoring Functions:

Relating

Mentors build and maintain relationships with their mentees based on mutual trust, respect, and professionalism. Relating behaviors create an environment that allows mentors to develop a genuine understanding of their mentees' ideas and needs and encourages mentees to honestly share and reflect upon their experiences.

Assessing

Mentors gather and diagnose data about their mentees' ways of teaching and learning; they determine their mentees' competency and confidence to handle a given situation; they identify unique aspects of the school and community culture; and they take note of the school district's formal and informal procedures and practices. Assessing behaviors ensure that the mentees' professional needs are identified so that mentoring decisions can be based on a thoughtful consideration of a variety of data.

Coaching

Mentors help their mentees fine-tune their professional skills, enhance their grasp of subject matter, locate and acquire resources, and expand their repertoire of teaching modalities. Coaching behaviors allow mentors to serve as role models to their mentees; to share relevant experiences, examples and strategies; and especially to open new avenues by which mentees can, through reflection and practice, take responsibility for improving their own teaching.

Guiding

Mentors wean their mentees away from dependence by guiding them through the process of reflecting on decisions and actions for themselves and encouraging them to construct their own informed teaching and learning approaches. Teaching involves constant decision making. The mentor places the responsibility for decision making with the mentee. Decisions about teaching are driven by reflection. The guiding skill of the mentor is to ask the right questions the right way, and at the right time--questions that encourage the mentee to reflect on his or her decisions. Guiding behaviors stimulate the mentees' creative and critical thinking, empower them to envision future situations, encourage them to take informed risks, and help them build the capacity to develop perceptive decisions and take appropriate actions.

These mentoring functions do not occur in isolation. They consistently overlap and complement each other during the mentoring process.