Mentorship

Reflect on your work in your PDS this semester. How have you benefitted from the mentoring relationship you have with your mentor teacher? What actions have you taken to be sure that the mentoring relationship is beneficial to you both?

This semester, I have had an unusual experience in regards to mentorship. I started with one mentor teacher who retired part way through the semester and then I got a new mentor teacher. This experience has been very beneficial to me because I have got to see how two different people manage and run the same classroom. The thing I have found that helps the most in creating a relationship with both of these teachers is e-mail. It is so hard to find time during the school day to plan things or talk about things, so using e-mail is a great way to keep in touch. Both mentor teachers I have had have very different strategies in the classroom and personalities. I have had to adjust to find my role in the classroom after the first teacher retired, and it has made me see that different situations require different actions and attitudes. The best part of this semester was seeing that a classroom can be run very differently, but still teach the students.