How to Mentor a New Teacher

Teacher mentoring is an important part of a teacher's first year. New teachers tend to struggle especially in the areas of classroom management and lesson planning. This article outlines the steps involves for giving a new teacher the support s/he needs during the first year of teaching.

1. Observe the new teacher's lessons. After observing a few lessons, the mentor should begin a weekly schedule for providing feedback whereby mentors share his/her observations, positive notes and areas s/he thinks should be improved. Mentors should take note of what worked particularly well and which areas need improvement without criticizing or judging the teachers. Mentors should be available to help new teachers on a frequent and regular basis.

2. Sit with the teacher in a room with minimal distractions. Sitting in the teacher's room is not a good idea! Together with the new teacher, try to sum up the lesson. What went well? What needed improvement? Give the new teacher the chance to come up with the answers by him/herself. [see a list of guiding questions below] Provide a few guiding questions if necessary. When were the students most engaged? When were they not focused?It is important for mentors to encourage teachers to stop and think after giving a lesson whether it was a good one or not, and why. This is not in order to indulge in self-congratulation or regrets, but in order to have a basis for their own learning from reflection on experience: this lesson was unsatisfactory, what could I have done to improve it? Or: this lesson was good, what was it exactly that made it?

How to Write a Mentor Teacher Report

In most situations, mentors for student teachers are provided with a form to use when they compile their reports. These forms vary in their content, so read them carefully before filling them out. As a mentor teacher, you provide reports that the student teacher can learn from. Because of this, include the positives and the negatives of the student teacher's instruction. Let the student teacher know what she is doing right and provide concrete, constructive criticism illustrating what she needs to improve.

1. Read the student teacher's lesson plan to make sure that the content standards are addressed, the teaching objective is defined and the procedure is logical.

How to Be a Mentor to a Troubled Child

There are thousands of children across the country that need mentors. Mentoring a child in foster care or from a bad home situation is a positive way to impact their lives and give them a good role model to communicate with. People often avoid being a mentor because of the uncertainty of how to be a good mentor. Here are some tips for mentoring a troubled child.

1. Be a friend. Your job as a mentor is not to be a surrogate parent or an authority figure, but to be a friendly face for the child to communicate with. Spending all of your time together lecturing them or trying to teach them right from wrong will only alienate them and make them feel like you are just another adult who can't relate to them.

2. Relate if you can. It will help the child you are mentoring to feel that you understand them if you share similar experiences that you have had in your own life. It doesn't have to be a huge revelation to be helpful; agreeing with them that little sisters are annoying and sharing a story or two about your younger siblings will help them feel closer to you and make it easier for them to talk to you.