1. What are the benefits of a structured relationship? What are
the disadvantages?
2. How might structure help you facilitate your mentees
learning? What structures are in your
current mentoring relationships? Do you
need to add more or less structure?
3. How much time do you spend talking about day to day issues
versus long term goals and development?
4. Which agreements would you like to adopt? What other
agreements would you like to put into place?
1. The questions and specific topics that I would prepare include: District/housekeeping questions, para issues, scheduling concerns, instruction/resource ideas, PDC, sharing strengths and weakness, and what my role as a mentor looks like to her. Mentees need to be honest about what they need support with so that they can get those answers and feel more confident about themselves as a first year teacher.
ReplyDelete5. Yes, I agree with Cynthia's description as a mentor. Cynthia built trust by emphasizing confidentiality. She doesn't want Rafa to say something she would rather hear than express his true feelings. She also wants to make Rafa think and not give him quick answers, even though this will take some self-discipline on her part to be a better listener. She wants Rafa to learn how to think strategically and make critical decisions on his own.
2. Expectations set a guideline for both parties to follow. It helps each member get the most out of the mentoring process.
ReplyDelete4. No, it did not undermine her credibility. I believe it helped Rafa see that everyone makes mistakes and has to learn. It is hard to take risks if you feel you have to be perfect for someone. I have told my mentee that I make mistakes and that it is OK. You just have to fix them and go on.
1. Some questions I would ask are things like their experience, best experience they can remember this far in their teaching career, and what are their strengths and weaknesses when working with students. I would also ask the mentee what their expectations for me the mentor is. I think the more you can get to know one another the better the working relationship will be.
ReplyDelete2. Setting expectations is a good way to start the year. I think it helps to keep things on track and to make sure points get covered. That away there aren’t any surprises. I think this also lets the mentee know how important they are and the job they do.
2. I have found that getting specific expectations established and discussed has been huge in mentoring for me. It is just like in the classroom, if you wait to establish expectations you can never go back and effectively do it. There are many things that I write down and go over with my new paras each time and it is just from practice and knowing exactly what I want and expect. I also think it is important to know what my mentee wants and expects from our relationship. When I was a mentee I liked to go to my mentor when I needed something or had questions. I do not want my mentee to feel like I do not trust her to establish her classroom the way she wants. I think this is all important to talk about before you get down to business.
ReplyDelete5. Cynthia did a good job at building trust in the relationship. She got to know Rafa first and understand some of his very basic and deep motivations. I think it is really a nice addition to the relationship to have a good understanding of each other and to know what really makes them tic and what they want out of their life.
I believe that these are the same questions from last week??
ReplyDeleteI think I have them fixed. Please proceed through the blog as posted.
DeleteQuestions from the books :
ReplyDelete1. I feel that there are a lot of benefits from a structured relationship. This helps to keep you on track and to create boundaries between the mentee and mentor. There is so much to cover and we also have responsibles within our own job that the occasional question or need for insight is okay but not all of the time.
2. Talking about day to day interaction is not nessesaraly a bad thing but I feel you can't spend all of your mentoring time doing this. Long term goals help you and your mentee to look at the bigger picture and to stay on track of where you want to end up.
2. How might structure help you facilitate your mentees learning? What structures are in your current mentoring relationships? Do you need to add more or less structure?
ReplyDeleteI feel structure helps in many ways to facilitate mentees. It helps everyone to keep on track. I feel that having the guide that Amber provided has helped me to know exactly what I need to talk about and as I talk about some of the things it makes me remember other important topics to be discussed.
I feel like I have provided structure in that the mentees and I went through the calendar and decided dates and what time worked to be able to meet every month. I also explained that if something comes up then we can always change it but this gave them a guide to start with. I feel like I am pretty structured with my mentees however I know I could always work on things.
5. Confidentiality is crucial. How do you understand confidentiality in a mentoring relationship? What can be shared and what cannot be shared? Have you adopted a confidentiality agreement in your mentoring relationship?
I have set forth with my mentees that as they struggle with things whether it be life or school life that I am always a ear to listen. I have explained that this is a safe place as it is confidential information that will not leave this room. I don't feel it is a agreement just something that has been established from the very beginning. I have shared with them to be careful about what to say to teachers or paras or any outside person because it may get them into serious trouble at some point. Sometimes in conversation you say something not really realizing that you are breaking the rules as confidentiality may apply. I also have explained about Facebook or any social media as to what they post and any information regarding students can not be posted for any reasoning. I gave the example of the tech from our district wanting us to set up a weekly for our classroom, I explained that no this was not appropriate for special education as it was confidential and if pictures need to be posted they could be posted on the regular education classrooms site. We just have to be careful about everything we do within education.
1. What are the benefits of a structured relationship? What are the disadvantages?
ReplyDeleteThe benefits of a structured relationship is it helps to keep things professional and on topic. You can move through an agenda quickly and address what is listed and you utilize your time wisely. The disadvantage to this is there are times when you need to have informal conversations and if you only have a structured agenda or meeting time, valuable conversations can be lost.
3. How much time do you spend talking about day to day issues versus long term goals and development?
We spend a majority of the time working on day to day issues rather than long term goals. I think that is something I need to improve on and ask my mentee what she wants to accomplish this year other than just survival! We have talked about ways we can improve our progress monitoring (something I feel I always need to improve on) and how we can make it most effective for our students.
Advantages of a structured relationship and the disadvantages? One of the advantages is it keeps our scheduled time on task and covering the information that we need to cover. It can be easy to get off track and before you know it the time is gone. I feel that my mentee and I have become friends but I also want her to know that the information is important and to see me as something more that just a friend.
ReplyDeleteHow much time do you spend talking about day to day issues versus long term goals and development? I feel that our relationship with our mentee is a little different than the one in the book. In the book Rafe has his supervisor and colleagues to go to have basic questions answered and his mentors role is to focus on long term goals. My mentee basically only has me, so the beginning of the year is mainly survival, the first 6 months of teaching is hard and so many little things to learn. My mentee really struggled at first in knowing how to manage her para's so we spent quite a bit of time discussing strategies in how to deal with para's. I feel it is a need of our mentees to discuss the day to day issues. Now that things have settled in I will try and address long term goals. It might be helpful to see what her two HPEC goals are and help her achieve those and document her efforts.
1. What are the benefits of a structured relationship? What are the disadvantages?
ReplyDeleteI think having a structured relationship can keep all parties focused on the task at hand. It is easy to get of task and focus on minor issues. By having a structured relationship the mentee and mentor stay focused on the bigger picture. Like the quote in the book "Begin with the end in mind," if we don't stay focused we will never accomplish our goals. Structured relationships can also give the mentee the feeling of not being able to bring new questions to the mentor if they don't fit within the structure. I think being balanced between informal and structured is the best way to go.
3. How much time do you spend talking about day to day issues versus long term goals and development?
The beginning of our journey this year has been a little more challenging than the typical beginning of a school year. We have been focused on the day to day issues. I know that once we get structures and systems in place for some students we will be able to focus on more big picture items.