When I first heard about what Lipton calls "I" listening, I thought about the fact that as school librarians we are often in problem-solving mode. In fact, my job (being combined technology and library) often has me in crisis mode, jumping from one crisis to another. This focus on solving problems and offering solutions is likely to be difficult to set aside when meeting with someone as a mentor. It will be a challenge to shift to another type of listening and approach things as being a supportive growth agent rather than problem-solver. My listening survey results clarified this as being true, because my scores on sections A, C and D are all low and indicate my ability to be an effective listener in those realms. My scores of 13 and 14 on sections B and E respectively indicate that I will need to concentrate on NOT interjecting my own stories or recommending specific solutions to my mentee. If I am able to do so, I believe I can be a supportive and effective growth agent.In reading the first section of Mentoring Matters, I wondered if the statistics are the same/similar for novice school librarians as those noted for novice classroom teachers, or whether we even have those statistics separated out. While I love being a school librarian, I do believe that there are more significant expectations of new teachers and more pressures for them to perform in a particular way. Perhaps it is the nature of most people not understanding what it means to be a school librarian, that there is not as much pressure placed on us as on classroom teachers. I also found it problematic that all the examples in the Lipton text are very specific to classroom teachers. It is difficult to continually try to extrapolate those examples to what might be the case in a school librarian mentee-mentor conversation. It will be good to balance this text with the AASL standards and the library-specific rubrics from Danielson.
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 e...
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