Ideas from teachers Rachael Peterson and Beth Edwards.
It’s that time of year where droves of college students step into a classroom to begin their student teaching. This experience can either make or break a future teacher’s desire to continue teaching or pursue a different career altogether.
The relationship between the student and mentor teacher is paramount to the student teacher’s success when it comes to classroom teaching, their feelings about teaching, and creating habits around work-life balance. What’s even more beautiful about this relationship is that it mirrors how Jesus taught us to disciple and be discipled. Both individuals benefit from this form of intentional discipleship as they learn and grow from each other.
Whether it’s your first time mentoring a student teacher or you’ve done it a few times, may these reflections refine, affirm, or challenge your own practice.
Relationships are Key
Set aside time before student teaching begins to establish relationship and trust with your student teacher. Here are some ideas to build trust between both people:
-Invite your student teacher over for a meal! They’re probably a college student who hasn’t had a good homecooked meal in a while. They’ll love it, no matter how simple or complex it is. If you’re not into cooking, consider treating them to a local restaurant. They may or may not be from the area or may not have had time to explore their college city. This helps your student teacher to realize there’s more to life than teaching.
-Go out to coffee and talk about NON-SCHOOL REALTED topics. What are their hobbies? Likes? Dislikes? It’s important for them to see someone modeling healthy work-life balance, especially when it comes to day-to-day conversations.
-Go on a walk or hike in the area by your school. Use it as a time to get to know your student teacher and to introduce them to the community around their school.
As you get to know your student teacher, find time once a week to build relationship outside of school. I also recommend eating lunch together as often as you can.
Just like we intentionally build relationships with students, we can use the same mindset for building relationships with our student teachers.
Along with building relationship with your student teacher, be sure to help them build relationships with all school stakeholders: other staff, students and their families.
I made sure to assign 1-2 parts of the “Back to School” PowerPoint to my student teacher to lead. She was nervous, but it helped her build rapport with the parents and established her as another teacher in the classroom.
If your student teacher is joining in the Spring, consider inviting parents to a Spring “Back to School” night so that they can meet your student teacher. This is also a great tool for strengthening parent/family partnerships at the start of the Spring semester.
Make Mistakes & Self-Reflect
Student teachers are already VERY aware they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s vital that we, as mentor teachers, model self-reflection and willingly make mistakes in front of them.
Beth Edwards, 2nd grade teacher, notes that some lessons totally flopped. Rather than ignoring mistakes or making excuses, she would tell her student teacher, “Don’t do what I just did!” Beth’s willingness to make mistakes, reflect, and teach through that reflection helped her student teacher to realize that even veteran teachers didn’t have it altogether.
Beth also encourages student teachers to ask themselves the following questions when reflecting on their mentor teacher’s modeling:
What should I take with me in my own classroom?
What should I leave behind?
It is also important to note that every student teacher is different. They will all enter with differing levels of ability when it comes to self-reflection.
You might have a student teacher who doesn’t initiate self-reflection at all to a teacher who initiates it and may even be too hard on themselves.
It’s important to meet your student teacher wherever they’re at in the self-reflection process. Just like we differentiate and scaffold for students, we can do the same with our student teachers when it comes to learning how to initiate self-reflection.
Model, Model, Model
Modeling is key for the development of your student teacher. When I was in high school, my longtime mentor assigned each of us high school girls to a middle school girl. She said, “Now, you’re going to do what I have been doing for you, but with your middle school girl.”
So, we listed what she had done for us: taken us to coffee, taken us hiking, read the Bible with us, and created thought-provoking questions to deepen our faith. Then, we took that list and did those things with our middle school mentees.
Student teaching follows the same model: watch me, work with me, then do it on your own. This is discipleship: walk with me and do things the way I do them.
Here are some ideas for getting the most out of your time modeling for your student teacher:
- Have a lesson plan ready for your student teacher to go through as you teach. Have them keep notes next to each part of the lesson. Their notes could be things they wonder or things they noticed.
- Assign them a part of the lesson design to focus on. For example, I might say, “Take notes of the anticipatory set. Focus on its congruency to the lesson, active participation, and use of students’ prior knowledge.” By narrowing down the modeling, your student teacher can dive deeper into the elements of instruction rather than always focusing on the general parts of instruction.
- After a lesson, invite your student teacher to evaluate you. This is VERY humbling, but so necessary in the modeling process. Use the elements of a lesson design or the Essential Elements of Instruction to guide the conversation. For example, you might have them rate you on your anticipatory set, active participation, closure, etc. Invite them to share what they’d keep or what they’d do differently.
Develop a Growth Mindset
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” -Tim Notke
Student teachers might feel like they’re lacking the talent of a veteran teacher or other teachers in their program. By developing a growth mindset, we remind student teachers that teaching is a skill that CAN be developed whether or not you have the “natural talent” for it.
Here are some ways you can help develop a growth mindset in your student teacher:
- While they teach, script their lesson. This helps your student teacher take a more clinical approach to teaching with practical steps for changing or keeping certain teaching behaviors. Scripting means that you write ONLY what the teacher says, then label their words using the 4 teacher actions: giving Information, Responding to students’ efforts, Active participation, or Questioning techniques (IRAQ). Your student teacher can see what areas of the teaching actions they are hitting and which ones need to be used more.
- Use cognitive coaching techniques to develop a growth mindset. Cognitive coaching means that you’re asking specific questions that prompt the student teacher to come up with their own solution. Rather than saying, “You need to have more active participation. Students are falling asleep!”, you would say, “What did you notice about some of the students in the back of the room? What would have made a difference in their learning today that you could implement tomorrow?”
- Set mini-goals related to their instructional practice by determining what’s most important. If they’re having trouble with classroom management, don’t give them a list of all the things they’re doing wrong. Rather, determine the one area of their classroom management that seems to be the linchpin for all their problems. Set a goal related to that one area (teacher voice, clear directions, consistent follow-through, community building, etc.). Check-in on that goal throughout the day, then add another mini-goal for your student teacher to work on. Be sure to celebrate movements towards growth!!
Plan for Release
Your student teacher will come to you with their college’s takeover plan. As the mentor teacher, though, you have the professional decision making ability to advocate for flexibility in the plan.
If you notice your student teacher needs more modeling, consider the following schedule:
- Weeks 1-2: student teacher observes and reflects on the mentor teacher’s teaching. Teach, model, and reflect with them on EVERYTHING YOU DO.
- Week 3: student teacher takes over 1 part of the day (small group instruction, 1 subject, or the last half of the period).
- Weeks 4-10: student teacher takes over 1-2 subjects or parts of the day until they are teaching ~90% of the day or class period. Once a week, the mentor teacher takes back 1 subject or part of the day to model for the student teacher.
- Weeks 11-14/16: student teacher and mentor teacher begin to team teach, slowly releasing the teaching load back to the mentor teacher. Team teaching could look like one teacher starting the lesson, then handing the middle or end of the lesson over to the other teacher.
- The final week, the mentor teacher will take over teaching duties so that the student teacher can finish out their own course work.
If your student teacher catches on quickly and is ready to go, consider the following schedule:
- Weeks 1-2: student teacher observes and reflects on the mentor teacher’s teaching. Teach, model, and reflect with them on EVERYTHING YOU DO.
- Week 3: student teacher takes over 1 part of the day (small group instruction, 1 subject, or the last half of the period).
- Weeks 4-10: student teacher takes over 1-2 subjects or parts of the day until they are teaching ~90% of the day or class period. Mentor teacher focuses solely on scripting and helping the student teacher reflect on their teaching. You may or may not continue to model for them depending on where they’re at in their teaching abilities.
- Weeks 11-14/16: student teacher and mentor teacher begin to team teach. The student teacher leads the discussion in how team teaching will look. The final week, the mentor teacher will take over teaching duties so that the student teacher can finish out their own course work.
Having a student teacher is one of the greatest joys I’ve had as a teacher. It pushes you to learn and grow in ways that you hadn’t previously considered.
Being a mentor teacher taught me more about myself as an educator than anything else I had previously done. The best joy, though, is seeing your student teacher start their teaching career and thrive in the work that God has given them to do.
Share with us how your experience went, whether you’ve been the mentor teacher or the student teacher. We’d love to promote a community of discipleship among teachers and student teachers!