4.1 Using Video for Mentoring

Padlet activity:

Share your stories of using video in mentoring or during your own training in the Padlet below. What is important to consider when using video, what works and what doesn’t? How do you/mentees feel when watching your/their lesson?

I haven't been recorded as a mentee, neither as a mentor. But it is something I will definitely use because it will help me figure out what is wrong or not effective with teaching, little details that may improve the mentee tecnics. Nevertheless, not all actions are captured in a video, but it is a good way to focus on some main points of teaching.

Badge 2

2.3 Description of a mentoring situation

Activity 2.3

18/05/17 13:00

Description of a mentoring situation

You are being assigned as a mentor to a beginning teacher who has started his induction year at your secondary school 7 months ago. You have already had a couple of first mentoring sessions together.

One day, in the staff room during lunch time, your mentee explains to you that some students do not respect him, and some of them speak in class and he does not know how to deal with the situation.

He is very stressed and feels one of the reasons he is not handling the situation well is because he does not have sufficient time to prepare his lessons. He is teaching 3 different subjects to 7 different classes between the ages of 13 and 16, each with around 20 students. He has also volunteered to support the preparations for the upcoming school play.

Your mentee explains that a colleague in his department has told him to be stricter and more authoritative with a louder and deeper voice. But first attempts at doing this have gone wrong resulting in a confrontation with the students.

Your Headteacher has recently approached you and asked for an update on the progress made by your mentee as a parent recently phoned her complaining about the beginning teacher.

Your response

You are now entering into a mentoring session with your mentee.

What do you tell your mentee? What questions will you ask him? What information do you share with him? What will you address first, what last?

Think about some of the points made in this section and in the Conversation Map of TeachOntario and include these in your answer. Take a look at how others would approach this situation.

My response:

First, I would let him express himself and tell me everything he feels about it.

A. Phase of planning

Then, I would ask him to find some possible solutions he thinks that are appropriate for the problem.

The other step would be for me to propose him to design some alternative activities, in case the first ones do not work.

b. Reflecting

Afterwards, I would make a conversation on how it is natural to feel stressed, but that also every teacher may have felt this way.

C. Problem-solving + Reflecting

In the end, I would let my mentee try the activities he has planned and wait for our next communication and for the feedback. 

2.3 Stimulating and scaffolding thoughtful reflection and discussion

Stephen Covey, an American educator and author of numerous books:

“Most people do no listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.”

Module 2.1 Activity

Activity

Post in the padlet:

Identify 1 or 2 problems/projects/questions, which you think will be of primary interest to your mentee as well as yourself, and share them in the Padlet below .

My post:

"A usual problem of my mentees is the time and the use of ICT. 

1) About the time, the teacher-students usually wonder how they can manage teaching time and how they can fit all their work in the given time in the classroom.

2) The second problem they are aware of is how they can adjust their teaching with the new technologies and how they can take advantage of them during their teaching."

Badge of Module 1

Activity Module 1.5

Post in the forum:

Is summative assessment required?

Stavroula LadaPosts: 1

Join Date: 15/04/15

"For me, formative assessment is required, so the mentee gets better and the mentor is aware of his technics.

I believe that summative evaluation is also needed because the mentee has got an overview of the whole mentoring process, as long as this evaluation is not an obstacle for the future developement of the student-teacher."