321 of Reflection on Module 2/Week 2

   It seems as if good mentoring is a lot like good teaching. There is an essential emphasis on the mentor-mentee relationship in a similar way that the best teachers create a strong and trusting relationship to connect with their students. This is absolutely essential for a trauma-transformed approach, which is an additional lens I now always use. Strong relationships and interpersonal connections create emotional safety, which is the first step in a student (or mentee) can then be open to making meaning of an experience. Unless that emotional safety is present, one cannot expect any growth to be possible.

    Another way mentoring is similar to teaching is in the need to balance cognitive challenge with support. Understanding which stance to take in a mentoring relationship, and when to flexibly shift from one stance to another is paramount to providing that cognitive challenge with a supportive approach. If this is not accomplished, the mentee will likely experience cognitive dissonance which can lead to self-doubt, uncertainty, defensiveness, and potentially have lasting effects on a beginning librarian.

    On page 39, Lipton and Wellman states "The mentor's primary goal is to increase beginning teachers' capacities to learn from their teaching, while decreasing dependency on the mentor." Again, this is a goal of good teaching with a slight difference in that students are expected to increase their capacity to learn from their learning or activity/experience. But if we are thinking about performance-based standards for teaching and learning, students are expected to increase their own abilities while decreasing their dependency on the teacher. I simply cannot read about mentoring without reflecting on how similar it is to teaching. 

    I do have two questions related to this week's content. First, was the reference to "principles of practice" on page 44. While I probably could identify these in a list, I am not sure I know what these are, in general. Is this just educational jargon or is it a gap in my own professional learning? Is it more connected to classroom/content teaching and not emphasized in pre-service library training programs?

One last thought I have is that after reading section 3, I began to realize the similarities between mentoring and my collegial role as librarian and technology "master" (a title that has recently been informally bestowed upon me by colleagues which I am embracing because no other title can so succinctly capture my actual job). During the reading, I came to understand that I have been functioning informally as a mentor for new teachers just by virtue of doing my job, especially in my current (very small) school. Each teacher has a combined-grade classroom, so no one else in the building can help them with grade-specific or age/developmental concerns. But because I collaborate with every one of them, at every grade level, AND because I also have access to schoolwide resources and processes (purchase orders, budgeting, technology) in a way classroom teachers do not, new teachers seek me out for support in all aspects of their new jobs, even if they are just new to the grade level but know the school specifics already. This also happens because I make sure to be approachable, non-judgmental and as helpful as possible. The only other person who new teachers might ask for this kind of support is often not very approachable and can, at times, be uncooperative or even unpleasant. It will be a challenge to monitor my mentor relationships and make certain that I am not just offering solutions, as is my inclination both personally and professionally, but that I pay close attention to the "Continuum of Learning-Focused Interaction" and flexibly shift from stance to stance as appropriate.