Mentorship in teaching is a proactive response to one simple fact: being a new teacher is hard. The mentor’s goal is to serve as an experienced guide through the challenges of a new profession.
Whether rookie or veteran, teachers are responsible for producing strong student learning and positive behavioral outcomes, while working with limited time and resources. They experience high levels of daily stress, a condition that contributes to attrition and a growing teacher shortage in this country.
When more experienced teachers interact with new teachers, the result is mutual professional growth and improved student learning. At a basic level, required for first-year teachers by more than half of U.S. states, mentors oversee and document a new teacher’s progress. On a more advanced level, they provide feedback, offer support and help guide the careers of less experienced educators. The Education Commission of the States reported a correlation between high-quality mentorship and new teacher retention.
What Does Mentorship Look Like?
A beneficial teacher mentoring relationship is built on trust. Both the experienced teacher and the new recruit should feel confident in their goal of strengthening the latter’s development. A mentor must be able to keep confidences and provide support without judgment. In most cases, a mentor will observe the new teacher in the classroom as well as meet with them individually.
To facilitate new teacher development, the Southern Regional Education Board has identified three tiers of new teacher needs: low-, mid- and high-level needs.
Low-level needs are logistical in nature, such as learning the layout of the school and becoming familiar with software.
Mid-level needs are what many new teachers require most. They include practical skills like how to hold parent-teacher conferences and how best to collect and grade assignments.
High-level needs relate to long-term professional development, such as strategies for teaching diverse learners and honing critical thinking skills.
A new teacher whose mentor addresses all three tiers of needs will experience the benefits for years.
Ultimately, a successful mentor acts as a trusted counselor to the new teacher by providing professional guidance as well as empathetic personal support to mitigate on-the-job stresses.
What Are the Positive Outcomes for Teachers and Students?
Stressed educators are not the most effective. Given the unique challenges new teachers face, mentorship programs that reduce this stress are critical to teacher health and student learning. Research finds teachers who experience high levels of anxiety and pressure commonly correlate with students who have lower levels of academic performance and social development. Those who feel burned out and unsupported likely are not teaching to their full potential.
Fortunately, the opposite is also true. New teachers who receive active support become better teachers. Gallup research found that increased teacher job engagement correlates with higher student engagement and student achievement outcomes. Teachers who participate in mentoring programs improve instructional skills as well as students’ test scores. Mentoring new teachers pays off for schools in three ways: Teachers feel better, work better and stay longer in the profession.
Mentoring provides clear benefits to new teachers and their students. It may even help experienced educators as they engage in discussions and learn from their new colleagues.
The best mentors are encouraging, nonjudgmental and committed to the professional and personal well-being of their mentees. Schools that want to retain teachers and improve student learning will structure their mentorship programs to address the spectrum of teachers’ needs. When mentorship is effective, teachers, students and schools win.
Learn more about Lamar University’s online M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership program.
Sources:
Southern Regional Education Board: Mentoring New Teachers
Arizona Department of Education: COVID-19 Guidance & Suggestions
Economic Policy Structure: U.S. Schools Struggle to Hire and Retain Teachers
Gallup: The Other Outcome: Student Hope, Engagement, Wellbeing
Education Commission of the States: Mitigating Teacher Shortages: Induction and Mentorship
