DOING IT RESILIENTLY

MODULE 2: RESILIENT RELATIONSHIPS

2.2 WORKING WITH YOUR MENTORSKEY LEARNINGS AITSL Standards: 6.2, 6.3, 7.4 Identify the elements of mentor-mentee practice Develop professional communication strategies and skills

ENGAGING

How do you feel about working with your mentor(s) . . . hopeful, excited, safe, anxious, vulnerable?

Which cartoon speaks most strongly to your feelings about getting on with your mentor(s)?

EXPLORINGMentors: Resilience Resource, Resilience Challenge . . .

Mentors , as a resilience resource, offer these things Mentors, as a resilience challenge, offer these things

Reflect on Process: What do you notice about how you went about filling in the chart? What does that suggest about what expectations, perceptions and attitudes you are bringing to the mentor relationship?

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Reflect on Product: What do you notice about your lists in each column? How might you extend your thinking by putting each column in order of importance? Or grouping within each column? Or grouping across the two columns?

What do you most want to learn about working resiliently with your mentor? How might you learn that?

Building New Relationships with Mentors

What is challenging about building relationships in a new environment? What can be

particularly challenging about building the mentor relationship?

What practices have you used to work effectively and happily with a mentor? How did it go?

Effective Practices Your experiences/plans

Share goals and expectations at the start: identify common expectations for the relationship; identify and share goals for the placement; identify issues that might arise: agree on strategies you’ll use to work together to achieve your learning goals

Respect your mentor teacher’s approach to teaching and established classroom practices and routines. Even if these practices are not ones you intend to use when you start your career, it can be a valuable learning experience to enact these and reflect on the effect on teaching and learning.

Maintain existing routines and practices: this can also assist you with classroom management in the short term. If your mentor teacher is happy for you to make changes, do this gradually and evaluate as you go.

When trying new approaches, discuss this with your mentor teacher and seek advice about how the students may respond. You may need to do some careful negotiation with your mentor teacher, depending on their view. Be prepared to justify why your approach will be beneficial for student learning. And be sure to respect their experience and views.

Focus forward when dealing with feedback: what is the issue and how can it be improved? An area for improvement is an area for growth! Continual improvement is important for all teachers, no matter how long they have been teaching.

Use the AITSL standards to frame the feedback you receive. View ‘Illustrations of Practice” on the AITSL website to see how each standard can be demonstrated at the graduate level. You will also find some good ideas to help you improve.

Teamwork Tips The mentoring relationship can be usefully seen as a team, in which you can use teamwork practices. Of the practices below, which will you find you do naturally, and which will you have to consciously develop?

Be respectful Respect everyone you work with, even those who are sometimes difficult to get along with. Respect the expertise and experience of your colleagues.

Be supportive Help your colleagues where you can. This will make it easier for you to ask for their assistance too.

Be approachable

Let others get to know you on a personal level, rather than just as a colleague.

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Be positive In order to get along with a variety of colleagues, be positive in your interactions with and about them.  Avoid talking negatively about colleagues and don't engage in workplace gossip.

Be patient If something goes wrong, don’t blame others, but try to find a workable solution.

Be professional Be professional in your approach to your work and in your communication (verbal and written) with colleagues. This is a good way of showing and generating respect.

Be dependable If you commit to doing something ensure you do it. Don’t make excuses.

Be open-minded

There are many ways of working together and achieving success.

Be a team player:

Show that you’re a team player by volunteering to help out with school activities – but choose those that won’t be overly time consuming especially when you are starting out. Taking notes at a meeting for example, is a simple task that can be achieved in a short period of time.

Avoid the ‘walnut trees’ and find the ‘marigolds’

Staffrooms can be negative places and people are not always as welcoming as they could be. Becoming negative is sometimes a result of not having a range of resilience strategies to manage challenges. You might not be able to do anything about others’ negativity, but you can decide how much you let it affect you. Try to manage negativity by focusing on what you can control, building strong relationships with your students and looking for opportunities for positive experiences. See resources for more info.

THEORY: Mentoring styles and the balance of power

Decision-making and power are balanced between mentor and mentee, although at different points in the process the mentor or mentee may have more or less of each.

When do you need the mentor to be more and less ‘in charge’ and responsible for decisions? How would you communicate this with them?

‘The uniqueness of every teacher’s approach to teaching, shaped by personal teacher identity, is what makes every classroom ‘look’ different. For this reason, each mentoring relationship with a Preservice teacher is unique and has learning opportunities for both parties. It is not a one-way transfer of skills and knowledge from expert to novice, but an opportunity for challenging those things that create personal philosophies and modes of operation. To acknowledge the

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Style of

Mentoring

Description What do you do as

teacher?

What do you want as

mentee?

High direct,

High indirect

Mentee sees mentor emphasizing

telling and asking

High direct,

Low indirect

Mentee sees mentor as doing lots of

telling, little asking

Low direct,

High indirect

Mentee sees mentor mainly asking,

listing, reflecting back mentee’s

ideas and feelings

Low direct,

Low indirect

Mentee sees mentor as passive, not

doing much of anything

differences that make up teacher identity is to be aware of the potential for enrichment.’ (Walkington 2005:54)

Identify some difference of dispositions or beliefs or practices that you might have with your mentor. Which ones have the most potential for disrupting the relationship and the learning opportunities for you both? What can you do?

A CASE STORY: The Science of Expectations and EngagementA preservice teacher on her first placement is challenged by low student engagement and her mentor’s response to this issue.

Expectations

I did not choose this school. My preference was to go to a ‘mainstream’ ‘academic’ school. I thought this would give me a good grasp of how to teach the content, and not worry too much about behaviour management, just yet. Unfortunately, due to a shortage of teacher mentors in my preferred schools, I was instead placed in a school that I knew nothing about, except that it was somehow disadvantaged. I was further informed that my assigned mentor was new to the school, but quite experienced; that is, taught for over 30 years, and “looking forward to retirement”…!

During our first encounter, I was glad to know that my mentor was kind-mannered and had a friendly disposition, therefore easy to get along with. However, she said something that made feel rather uneasy… “Whatever you do, I’ll give you a good mark.” I thought to myself, “The hell’s that supposed to mean? Aren’t my grades performance-based? Have I made such a good impression with my professional persona that I get an instant pass? Or perhaps she has such low expectations of mentees that simply showing up is considered an outstanding achievement?”

Digital Switch-off

I attended one of my mentor’s year 9 lessons. The 9s were notorious for being rude, obnoxious and priding themselves on knowing somebody with a criminal record! We got on well, I think. After all, I was small, non-threatening and never made them do anything they didn’t want to.

The lesson’s topic was ‘The Greenhouse Effect’. I was excited to watch the teacher in action (finally!), explaining something as important and relevant as climate change. To my surprise, the teacher’s activity was silently watching Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, which the children seemed not too thrilled about. Halfway through the documentary, students’ noise levels became quite deafening, so the teacher turned off the movie, disappointed with students’ perceived lack of interest in climate change. After berating them for a good minute or two, she instructed that the rest of the lesson would be dedicated to completing their ongoing project; creating a powerpoint on energy efficient houses. I thought about how students could easily disengage from such an open task, and perhaps a directed question such as “How can you get clean electricity to your home without polluting the air?” or a similar question would make the activity more relevant to their own lives. Anyway, the students seemed rather pleased with the teachers’ task. I soon found out why… they got to play games on their laptops when the teacher wasn’t looking! 20 minutes later the bell rang and they were off.

I imagined how my mentor felt about that lesson . . .‘I have taught for more than 30 years in grammar schools and never have I seen such student disrespect for teachers. In my previous schools, the students wanted to learn and they were keen to get good grades and more importantly they were self-directed learners, but the kids here don’t seem to care. Don’t they know that the key to getting out of poverty is education? Don’t their parents want them to have a better life?’ Although I understand that these children come from difficult backgrounds, when they come to school, they must follow the school rules, and they must learn respect. I feel constantly disrespected and devalued by these students. I have sent numerous complaints to the principal about poor student behaviour and all I get from him is “What do you want me to do about it?” Expel them, is what I feel!’

I can understand how disappointed and frustrated my mentor must have felt; what a shock to her system and values the school must be (and all she wanted was an interesting last school before she slid gently into retirement). I too, was incredibly disappointed and frustrated. Not by the students, but by my mentor. By her seeming lack in interest in making a connection to the students. I wanted to learn from someone who was trying to address the students’ needs, difficult as this might be at times. I didn’t want to learn, ‘How not to do it,’ from a mentor, as this was something I’d spent a lot of time doing in my previous profession. I wanted to be energised and inspired.

Atmosphere of Uncertainty

The following lesson, students had to answer a list of end-of-chapter quiz questions about greenhouse gases, which they were to find from reading the entire chapter on their own. The teacher requested that I go around the class to assist students. To my surprise, every student I came across looked puzzled and clueless about the questions. I attempted to explain the questions to them, but it was hard because they lacked some basic conceptual understandings, such as the meaning of ‘atmosphere’. So I asked a few of them if they’ve been taught some content about Greenhouse gases previously. All said no. Sheepishly I went to the teacher to inform her that a large number of students had difficulty with the questions, and I was wondering what to do about it. The teacher’s response seemed a bit defensive. She told me that she had taught them all the necessary content, “But these kids have no discipline and no interest… Let’s face it, none of them will go on to become scientists.” I was speechless at the low expectations she had for these children, and remembered one of my university lecturer’s words… “If they haven’t learnt it, you haven’t taught it. ” What about scaffolding, I thought? Watching Al Gore might bring

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awareness about the impact of human activity on climate change, but it really doesn’t break down the basic scientific concepts that students need to know in order to understand such a complicated phenomenon.

Again, I wondered about my mentor’s perspective. She would not have WANTED to go into the class and not teach them anything. No-one wants to fail at doing their job. But she seemed more intent on finding reasons why the students wouldn’t or couldn’t learn, than putting energy into thinking about how she could do things to help them learn. Of course they were nothing like the students from her previous school. Perhaps none of the strategies and lesson plans she’d been using for the last 30 years would work here, even modified. Perhaps she was simply overwhelmed by the thought of having to start from scratch with her teaching, and feared that even if she did, it still wouldn’t ‘work’. It made me wonder about how there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ lesson plan. Every plan has to fit the needs of the students in front of you. And sometimes the students in front of you are nothing like you, and you have no instinct about what will work. It’s tempting to blame the students, or the school, or the resources for when things don’t work. It allows us to pass the blame and the responsibility to do something elsewhere.

Animal Rescue: A Missed Opportunity

I was attending a year 7 lesson, and there was one particular kid, Sally, who was pretty unpleasant towards both teacher and me; swearing, yelling, throwing pens and other stuff, ignoring instructions and questions and so on. The teacher briefed me about Sally’s background: low socioeconomic status, dysfunctional home environment, lack of discipline at home; all of which Sally had no control over. With that in mind, I tried not to take her hostility personally and instead to try and engage with her by finding out what she liked. After many unreciprocated smiles and a lot of explicit unfriendliness from her, I finally managed to find out that she was an animal lover. She loved Googling animal pictures, and her favourite activity was doing animal-themed ‘find the word’ puzzles. She had aspirations to be an RSPCA pet rescuer! After that ecstatic (for me) conversation, we both knew that the hostile phase has ended: no more swearing or yelling at me! I printed off all the animal find-the-words I could find, and made her promise to only do them during breaks. She kept her promise, and started showing some engagement with her studies (possibly due to my constant be-on-task pestering which she was now grudgingly accepting). The problem was she still hated “that fat white teacher”. I asked my mentor if Sally could perhaps do a research project about her favourite animal (koalas!), and expand it to features of other mammals, all of which was apart of the science curriculum. I was shocked when in response the teacher let rip with what felt like a very patronising rant that ‘You are not their friend’. She was rigid in saying we could not make an exception for Sally, and cynical that she was trying to ‘play’ me in order to get what she wanted, rather than fit in with the rest of the class. I was angry, because, yet again I felt she was setting up her students to fail, by not engaging them in the learning. Sadly, Sally did go on and fail her summative test. She didn’t care as she was used to failing, and the mentor gave me a “See-I-told-you” look. What a waste of opportunity to engage a bright, passionate, kind animal-lover to reach her full potential.

It was really hard this time to put myself in the position of my mentor in this situation, as this was something that clearly had the potential for a break-through with a student who was desperately in need of something to feel successful and interested in: I HAD broken through, but the barrier was quickly rebuilt. Maybe my mentor was simply anxious about what she saw as a young enthusiastic, perhaps idealistic teacher, allowing herself to be manipulated by her students. Maybe she had seen too many teachers try to modify things and ending up simply lowering their expectations of students, or losing rigor. Maybe she felt that it was unfair to the others to change things for Sally, or that it would lead to all the students wanting to do their ‘own thing’, the slippery slope.

I acknowledge that I lack the experience to teach children “properly”, but my university lecturer gave me a solid understanding of what good teaching looks like, and I worry that teachers who only teach the students who want to learn will never have an impact on student outcomes. I worry about my next placement: what if I have another mentor from whom I have to learn how to do it (teaching) by seeing, and implicitly participating in how not to do it. What are schools doing about the ongoing learning of teachers who are struggling to manage in classrooms where the students are not automatically engaged in learning? What if I end up employed in a school, with colleagues like this?

The process of reflecting on events that occurred during my first placement and trying to see things from the other’s (teacher) perspective was an enlightening and humbling experience. The feelings of anger I had towards the mentor were transformed into the knowledge that teachers in challenging situations need adequate support to thrive, in order to create healthy and positive classroom environments. My mentor had good intentions, but her teaching tools and attitudes needed an update to function in this new unknown- a classroom of disadvantaged and disengaged students.

Use the case interpretation template to respond to this case-story . . . What picture of resilience and the mentor relationship does this case-story present? What links can you make to theory or to your own experiences? What questions does it leave you with?

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YOUR STORY: Finding or creating a metaphor for the ‘good mentor’ or ‘good mentoring’

Think about what the ‘perfect’ mentoring experience would be/has been like for you, and what the person doing that mentoring is doing. Try to avoid creating a list of words in your head, but instead focus on imagining the experience: what you’re seeing, feeling, doing, hearing; what they’re saying, doing, being . . .

Now, create a metaphor or symbol for this by comparing this experience to a DISSIMILAR object or activity . . . write it or draw it and tease out all the ways in which great mentoring and your metaphor are linked

e.g. Good mentoring is like being given wings . . . A good mentor is like a watering can . . . Don’t worry if your metaphor doesn’t capture the WHOLE of the experience you’ve imagined, it’s just the most striking part of the picture you’re aiming to express

Or, find a metaphor in a random text (magazine, newspaper, textbook), by selecting an image at random (close eyes, point and pick), or one that is a vivid image or conveys a strong emotion. Then work to make a link between the metaphor vehicle and mentoring by completing the following statement: good mentoring/a good mentor is like _____________________________ because they both . . . .

Share your metaphors . . . notice the similarities and differences . . . what does that suggest

about mentoring and being a mentee?

Just as we can see classroom management as ‘making it easy for the kids to be good’, we can

see mentor management as ‘making it easy for the teacher to be a great mentor.’

WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS: Mentors as resilience resourcesCollegial relationships also play a vital role in teacher resilience. Work colleagues can provide inspiration and hope (Anderson & Olsen, 2006), can boost morale (Howard & Johnson, 2004) and can help with managing challenges and sustaining commitment (Brunetti, 2006).McCormack, Gore and Thomas (2006) found that ‘unplanned learning’ from colleagues was reported by early career teachers as a very significant form of support. Support from school administrators has also been shown to be important (Prather-Jones, 2011).

Mentors and/or positive relationships with significant adults can have be immensely beneficial for early career teachers. Mentors can provide a source of support and assist in the reflection and improvement process and can help mitigate the impact of job stress (Hong, 2012; Huisman, Singer, Catapano, 2010) and influence the likelihood of teacher retention (Albrecht, Johns, Mounsteven & Orlorunda, 2009).Tait (2005) argues that a strong mentor relationship is crucial to help early career teachers foster their resilience. The literature also acknowledges that the quality of the relationship between the mentor and the mentee plays a big role in determining the success of mentoring programs for early career teachers (Devos, 2010).

THE BIG PICTURE: Communication Skills

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Consider how you can use the challenge of building a positive relationship with your mentor as a way of developing professional communication skills that you will use with colleagues, parents and students:

Feedback approaches Assertive communication styles Dealing positively with criticism Active listening (covered in 2.3: working resiliently with parents)

STRATEGIES: Feedback models, assertive communication, dealing with criticism

1: Take a planned approach for the receiving of feedbackFeedback can often be ineffective when the person receiving it is not on the ‘same page’ as the person giving it. Think about when you’ve given feedback that hasn’t gone down well and what the reasons were for this. Negotiating a particular way of sharing feedback and having a system that you agree to use can often make this key part of the mentoring process much more effective and much less potentially unpleasant or undermining.

Have a look at the two models below. Which appeals the most? How and when might you negotiate the use of one of these models with your mentor?

A Five Step Approach to Giving Feedback

1: Create safety: negotiate a suitable time for sharing feedback2: Be immediate: share it as soon as possible after the event3: Identify the positive: start with the positives (and end with them)4: Be specific: present the facts not the value judgements5: Ask their perspective: this can happen at the beginning, middle and/or end of the feedback sharing.

Feedback Conference Planning GuidePreservice Teacher MentorA: Behaviours to continue/maintain Specific examples1.2.3.B: Behaviours to increase Specific examples Specific prescriptions/ strategies

1.2.3.

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C: Behaviours to reduce/eliminate Specific examples Specific prescriptions/strategies1.2.3.D: Responsibilities Owner

1.2.3.Date of next conference

2: Develop your assertive communication stylePassive communication style: I don't really care, I'll just avoid the problem, I'm not good enough, it doesn't matter...

Aggressive communication style: It's someone else's fault, I'm going to demand someone do something about this, I'm getting annoyed and angry.

Assertive communication style : I'm going to be honest and speak clearly and calmly, I can deal with the problem by acknowledging others' point of view, expressing my own view and calmly negotiating a resolution.

Assertiveness involves expressing honest feelings comfortably, exercising your personal rights without denying the rights of others.

Three-Part “I” assertive messages: effective because often the other person has not real idea of the effects of their behaviour or requests on us. The three parts comprise:

1: Description of specific behaviour2: Description of your specific feelings3: Description of tangible effects on your of the specific behavior

‘When you ask me to take on another job with a tight deadline, I feel pressurised because I don’t have the adequate time to do the new job properly and carry out the other work I have to do.’ (circle parts 1,2,3)

You can extend the message with a fourth part:

4: Clear statement about a) solution, b)options, c)possible consequences.

‘I would like to be able to talk about the problem with you. Options might be to reschedule my other work or train more staff. Then we could be more productive and less stressed.’

3: Deal Positively with Criticism: Recognize and choose from 6 optionsUsing assertiveness helps us maintain self-esteem, which is fundamental to effective communication:

1. Accept it: acknowledge the feedback/criticism and move on: don’t apologise or defend yourself2. Disagree with it: focus on specific aspects of the feedback, try to explain why you think it does

not fit and check the information on which the feedback was based.3. Set limits with the person who’s giving the criticism: say how you wish to be treated4. ‘Fog’ away the negative feedback or criticism: don’t agree or disagree but say ‘You may be right,’

‘I can see how you think that’ and move on.5. Delay your response: ask for time to respond if you feel surprised, confused or disappointed by

the feedback.

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6. Prompt and paraphrase: ask for more criticism or more details: works if the criticism is informative rather than manipulative in purpose.

SCENARIO

Using I-messagesChoose from a scenario below. Flesh out the context and script an I-message to communicate assertively Your mentor has said they’ll give you some important lesson planning/curriculum resources, but it’s been a week and

they’ve still not got around to it. Your mentor says something about your work that you feel is unfair Your mentor is continually late for your meetings A colleague of your mentor repeatedly drops by to chat when you’re in conference with them Create your own scenario . . .

Dealing Positively with CriticismIn groups, use the 6 options of response (above) to devise alternative assertive responses to the following situation (or one or your group’s devising):

You’ve been extremely busy working on an innovative and complex series of activities in a new curriculum area and have not been observing as many lessons as you previously had done, and had arranged to do with your mentor. One day your mentor, whom your respect and like, says ‘You seem so wrapped up in your own world at the moment that you never seem to have the time to take advantage of all the opportunities for learning that this school has offered you.’

TAKE HOME MESSAGE

What is the one most significant thing you’ve come across in the session today?

Additional Resources and Websites

USEFUL RESOURCES Marigolds and Walnut trees: http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/marigolds/

Communication strategies: http://www.collaborateaustralia.com.au/communication-strategies.php Active listening: http://www.studygs.net/listening.htm Conflict resolution: http://www.thirdside.org/ http://www.crnhq.org/ http://www.mftrou.com/workplace-conflict-management-strategy.html Teachers’ TV. (2010). What to do if … you don’t get on with your mentor. Retrieved from

http://archive.teachfind.com/ttv/www.teachers.tv/videos/you-do-not-get-on-with-your-mentor.html

References

https://www.brite.edu.au/

http://www.redbubble.com/people/beanoutback/collections/234320-lego

Rosenberg, M., O’Shea, L. & O’Shea (2002). Student teacher to master teacher: A practical guide for educating

students with special needs (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Education

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