Ask the Mentor of Mentors:
A Collection
Of Answers to Frequently Asked Mentoring Questions
© 2008, Barry Sweeny
In addition to working as a consultant, trainer,
and presenter, Barry Sweeny loves to BE A MENTOR and to continually
refine and develop his mentoring skills.
- That's why he is the Mentor of Mentors (M.O.M.). On a daily
basis, Barry uses email and the telephone to offer limited free
advice to any person working in mentoring. Got a burning question?
Ask the Mentor of Mentors.
-
- Here are his insightful answers to some of the most frequently
asked questions about mentoring and induction.
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- INDEX:
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What's the Difference Between
a Quality Program and an Effective Program?
There are some critical distinctions. They are critical because
they are fundamental to the way you improve your program and practices.
QUALITY is a condition that must exist relative to something else:
- I am a better quality mentor that you. (Not a very professional
statement however)
- I am a quality mentor as measured against the standards for
mentoring practice
Given this definition, the effort to become a higher QUALITY mentoring
program will require some mentoring program standards. The effort
to promote QUALITY mentoring requires standards of mentoring as
a professional practice. I have recently been giving this considerable
attention.
EFFECTIVENESS is a condition that also must exist relative to something
else. In this case, the something else is a purpose or set of goals.
In other words, a program is deemed "effective" if is
is successful in accomplishing what it was designed to do. This
is helpful from the perspective of continually improving a program,
sustaining the resources that support it, and accomplishing important
and valued things. However, this is not as simple as it would seem.
FOR EXAMPLE: A program that has as its sole purpose to "orient
new teachers to their new job", may assign a mentor to help
accomplish that purpose. It could then be said that this is an effective
mentoring program if all new teachers feel "well oriented".
However, placed against a set of program standards, or compared
to another program with additional purposes (such as the improvement
of instruction and student learning, the orientation program seems
of less quality and to be less effective than those which accomplish
more. This suggests that there is a consensus that such peer support
programs as mentoring and peer coaching should at least address
improving instruction.
What should be the most basic
goals of a quality induction program?
Quality induction programs might address as many as a dozen goals,
but there are three fundamental goals I recommend:
1. Orientation to the work setting, job expectations and responsibilities,
the organization, key people, organizational culture and philosophies,
and the specific tasks, and expectations of the job assignment.
2. Induction to the profession, including making a commitment
to the organization and the job, and the development of skills
necessary to function at least at the performance level of typical
employees
3. Induction into the shared vision for the profession and organization.
- Every profession and organization has a vision of what it is
trying to become that exceeds what it currently is capable of
doing. New employees need to enlist in the journey of continual
improvement, the development of the skills which are needed by
the desired employee and team member of the future, and the development
of the work environment, culture and organization which is sought
for the future. In other words, an excellent mentoring program
must answer the question, "how shall we induct a new person
into this organization and profession when we are just in the
middle of redefining ourselves?"
I assert that it is only when mentoring addresses all three of
these purposes that a mentoring program can be expected to increase
an organization's performance.
What is "Induction"?
Basically, induction is the process of joining a profession, learning
the specialized knowledge and skills expected of members of that
profession, and being accepted as a professional.
Literally, in teaching, that often means nothing more than signing
a contract and then "poof", you are a "professional"
teacher. I think many feel that this narrow definition lacks some
of the richness and complexity that we assign to our profession.
If a professional is more than someone whose living is earned by
doing a paying job, then induction to a profession must be more
than signing up for the career.
Induction could also be a longer process of up to several years,
which is needed to reach some level of competence, worthy of being
called "professional". When that level of competence is
achieved and you are a "professional", your induction
process is completed. The trick here is determining what level of
competence is enough to be called a "professional". Given
what has been happening with educator certification in most states,
the most reasonable way to determine when a novice teacher becomes
a professional is when (s)he attains the Standard (sometimes called
the "professional") Teaching Certificate. That level of
certification is earned because they have demonstrated a level of
competence based on their state's teaching standards. In that sense
then, the "induction period" would be the number of years
needed to earn the Standard certificate.
What are the
essential components of a quality induction program? Since
induction programs can have a range of goals, the components needed
to attain those different goals will vary considerably. However,
for a program intent on BOTH helping new teachers into the profession
AND promoting improved teaching and student learning, I have concluded
that:
- Mentoring is the most critical strategy, but is only one induction
strategy
- The other induction strategies which are also needed are:
- Initial beginning teacher orientation sessions and on-going
orientation for each new experience before it occurs
- Peer support groups
- Beginning teacher staff development
- Observation by the beginning teacher of expert teachers, best
done with a mentor who can help the protege debrief and use the
quality practices observed
- Professional development goals and action plans
- A professional development portfolio
Information about this list and each component is available in
Item #1 on my Publications List elsewhere on the web site.
What is "Mentoring"?
Mentoring is an age old method that we find in business, education,
and all areas of life, with adults and with youth. For our purposes
mentoring is for adults in education. However, that is still too
broad a field of study, because in that sense, mentoring is a process
that can both precede and follow induction, and also occur during
induction. Mentoring can occur any time someone seeks to learn from
someone else who has experience in the topic for learning. That
means that preservice, novice, and experienced teachers can all
have mentors. Mentoring during induction is the focus of
our conversation. Therefore...
Mentoring is the complex and developmental process which mentors
use to support and guide their protege through the necessary early
career transitions which are a part of learning how to be an effective,
reflective educator and a career-long learner.
How is coaching
different from mentoring? Mentoring is the all-inclusive
description of everything done to support protege orientation and
professional development. Coaching is one of the sets of strategies
which mentors must learn and effectively use.
Coaching is the support for learning provided by a colleague who
uses observation, data collection and descriptive, non-judgmental
reporting on specific requested behaviors and technical skills.
The colleague also must use open-ended questions to help the other
teacher more objectively see their own patterns of behavior and
to prompt reflection, goal-setting, and action to increase the desired
results.
Why don't all
excellent teachers also make excellent mentors? This is
a very real and pervasive phenomena in mentoring today. The answer
to this question is probably your biggest opportunity to make your
mentoring program a highly valued component of your district's program.
When I was originally trained as a new staff developer (1985) One
of the training components was a review of the "Principles
of Adult Learning". In fact, this topic is still an essential
aspect of staff development and mentoring today. It is very interesting
to me, however, that a comparison of "adult learning"
principles and "engaged learning" principles (another
hot topic today) shows that they are one and the same principles.
Let's consider an example. Adult learning theory states that we
need to respect the experience and prior knowledge of adult learners
and build on that strength in designing staff development for them.
Seems logical, right? We need to do that for adult learners, right?
But NOT for student learners??! Amazing! The principles of engaged
learning (which we learn in technology staff development) state
the same thing, but for kids!
That is why I assert that if a mentor is effective in working with
another adult learner, they are so because they have applied the
principles of "Adult/Engaged Learning" to that process,
whether they label it or think of it that way or not.
What's happening here ?! This issue is surfacing everywhere because
our profession is in the midst of redefining what excellence in
teaching is. That is why not all "good" teachers (by an
older definition) make good mentors (by a newer definition). That
is also why the opposite IS true. Great mentors are also automatically
great teachers. In fact, when I examine truly effective mentoring,
I find that it is the same thing as effective teaching as we
are coming to know it. This is quite important, as it clearly
indicates that learning to be an effective mentor is exactly the
practice we need for learning how to better teach our students.
My experience shows this concept to be the hidden potential of
effective mentoring and one which very few mentors or mentor leaders
understand. Resolving this issue has been a big focus of mine for
at least 8 years and it is what I mean when I use the term "high
impact" mentoring. It is teaching mentors HOW to mentor so
it promotes growth.
Why do mentors
in some programs seem incapable of providing quality mentoring?
It is true that many mentors do not provide the quality of relationship
or guidance we might wish to see provided. It is also true, in a
small fraction of mentoring cases, that the mentor should probably
not have been selected as a mentor.
Program leaders often must work to improve mentoring but they sometimes
get the cause of the problem and the problem mixed up. In other
words, you must be sure to get the "cart and the horse"
in the right order so you are focused on something that will improve
mentoring practices.
- The "horse" that must come FIRST is a quality mentoring
program.
- Once the program is functioning as it should, THEN it's time
to start looking for the "cart" of quality mentoring
to come along.
I place the success of mentoring squarely at the "feet"
of the mentoring programs in which the mentors work. Teaching students
does not sufficiently prepare one to be a mentor. Nor can we assume
that life prepares one to be an effective mentor. Even though there
are some of us who might agree that we were mentored (by some definition
of that word) how would we know how to be an effective mentor if
we never had a model of such effectiveness to observe ourselves?
This is why I strongly urge mentoring programs to provide a Mentor
of Mentors.
It is the mentoring program that needs to improve if it does not
clearly define mentor roles and tasks, the mentoring relationship,
the mentoring process, and if it does not adequately prepare, support,
AND provide excellent models for the mentors to help them accomplish
what we ask of them.
What evaluation
questions should an existing mentor program be asking itself?
Here are some questions that I frequently find I must ask when
people wonder about what they are accomplishing in mentoring. Perhaps
these questions will help you to "turn over" the issues
involved in induction program improvement so you can see them and
your own program from a new perspective.
The critical questions to ask are:
- Are there clear program purposes and expectations or
goals against which to measure current mentor and/or protege performance?
- Can mentor and protege performance be measured and supported
so that the assessment experience is positive, growth-producing,
holds participants accountable for effectiveness and results,
monitors stewardship for time and other resources, and leads to
actual improvement?
- Are there program purposes which are not evaluated?
- Are there program purposes which are evaluated and not attained?
- How do mentors actually use their mentoring time? Is
it enough time? What can they and can't they find the time to
do?
- Are there mentor roles and tasks defined against which
to compare mentors' actual use of time?
- Is there program evaluation that gives you feed back
about the extent to which the desired purposes are really happening.
- To what extent are mentors specifically and explicitly trained
in how to use mentoring to transform their teaching and
that of the proteges?
- To what extent are mentors explicitly trained in how to increase
student learning?
- To what extent do mentors and proteges create norms in
their own relationship which are different from and better than
those in the rest of the school culture?
- To what extent are mentors specifically trained in how to
respond positively when nonparticipants in mentoring make
comments that are negative or that reflect a misunderstanding
of mentoring?
- To what extent do mentors know how to help novice teachers learn
and join into the district's other improvement initiatives?
- To what extent do mentors know how to enlist novice teachers
in the career-long commitment to be a continual learner?
- To what extent is and should mentoring be used as a tool
for school improvement?
- To what extent have mentors discussed and had guidance in how
to induct novice teachers into a profession that is in the midst
of redefining itself?
- Have mentors been specifically trained in what it is that mentors
are supposed to model, when they themselves feel that they
are only beginning to become the kind of teachers that we now
know we need to be?
Almost always, mentoring programs do not have sufficient data to
answer these questions with any certainty. Often we respond that
we are too busy doing mentoring to evaluate what we are doing. Yet,
these do seem to be very critical questions that mentoring programs
would want to be able to answer, and even to address! Take the time
at some point to ask and answer these questions yourself.
Our Mentoring
Program is Just Fine. Is There Anything Else We Should Be Doing?"
When I hear this question, I wonder,
- What is the basis for the belief that mentors are doing a fine
job?
- Doing a fine job at what?
When asked questions such as, "How do you know if your program
is OK?" the response is usually, "We get very few complaints",
or "Everyone seems to think things are fine". My response
to these statements may seem to be a bit out of "left field",
but I often find it to be very appropriate. I respond, "Shouldn't
there be some complaints?"
If there are few concerns and few issues surfacing, then there
is good reason to believe that mentoring is only accomplishing a
tiny part of its potential. In addition to reducing the stress for
novice teachers, orientation to curriculum, etc. mentoring is also
one of the best tools there is to promote the creation of better
norms of collegiality and collaboration, to press for finding more
time for job-embedded staff development, increasing openness to
professional feed back, learning the power of seeing oneself through
another person's eyes, creating a relentless focus on improving
instruction, and consistently improving student learning.
If there are no complaints, there are probably few of these things
occurring, little challenge to the status quo, little growth, and
little professional stretching of roles, relationships, school culture,
etc. If there are few complaints, almost always that is good reason
to be concerned about the effectiveness of the mentor program.
If there are reasons to be concerned about the program's effectiveness,
then there are also good reasons to be concerned about your ability
to sustain the program in the future. Mentoring is invisible to
everyone outside the mentoring relationship. That suggests that
there are many decision makers in a school district who may have
little or no reason to value mentoring, and that suggests that these
decision makers will someday call into question the value of the
program. Think about it. What complaints SHOULD you expect to hear
given your program's goals?
What are the
Financial Benefits of Mentoring? - The Cost of Teacher Attrition:
The benefits of mentoring can be shown as financial and non-financial
costs. This answer is focused on the former. There are a number
of ways to illustrate that there are many hidden costs already in
the budget which are the current costs of NOT providing support
to new teachers. In fact, the cost of teacher attrition is MORE
than the cost of an effective induction program because it can save
the district money which was an existing and hidden cost. When you
show this "Return on Investment" (ROI) the program will
be perceived as more "cost effective" and "worth
it" than the approach of not supporting new teachers.
Here are some things to consider that demonstrate clear financial
costs.
What is the cost to the district when a new teacher leaves teaching
or is not rehired? What you want to identify are your district's
costs for:
- New teacher recruitment, especially for recruiting the kind
of diverse staff a great district wants?
- Administrative time for trips to job fairs & colleges,
screening applications time, interviewing, meetings to make
decisions?
- Newspaper, journal, internet and other ads
- Technology specialist time for placing recruitment and job
info on the district web site
- Brochure and flyer printing, folding, addressing, and mailing
- Personnel staff time processing applications, answering
phones, dealing with certifications, and other inquiries,
etc.
- Cost of background checks
- New teacher initial orientation
- New teacher training during the first year or two? (both that
just for new teachers and all other district training)
- Reduced student learning during the year or two that a new teacher
is learning to teach?
- Reduced student learning when a new teacher leaves with what
they have learned from trial and error, and a different new teacher
is hired without that hard won experience and starts over at the
beginning again.
- Loss of instructional continuity when new teachers leave or
are not rehired because they are not as successful as required?
- Administrator time spent orienting, evaluating, coaching, developing,
and supporting new teachers who are not retained?
Collect this data and figure it out as a cost for each individual
teacher. Then compare that to the cost of induction per teacher.
In many districts, you will be thousands of dollars ahead by doing
the right thing.
The Non-Financial
Benefits in Attracting New Quality Teachers - A very common
interview question now days is "Will I be assigned a mentor?"
Your district's ability to answer that question affirmatively, AND
to describe the quality of support you provide, is a critical lever
for attracting and hiring the best teachers available. Even when
you may not have the best salary to offer, you can compete for the
best when you treat professionals like a professional. The power
of mentoring and induction programs to improve the ability of a
district to attract the best new teachers and to dramatically increase
retention is very well documented. Increased attraction is critical
because:
- It increases the quality of the pool of job applicants
- It increases the number of applicants from which the district
can select
- It reduces the number of new teachers dismissed and the cost
of that dismissal in lost time and investment.
- It creates the high expectation that those who are selected
for a position in this district are exceptional teachers. That
helps you to establish the norm for expecting exceptional
teaching.
- It establishes the norm (even before hiring) that your district
expects and supports collaborative action to improve teaching
and the quality of student achievement. Isolated, completely autonomous
teaching is not what you want, so clarify what you do want.
What are the
Non-Financial Costs of Teacher Attrition? Even though decision
makers seem most interested in financial costs related to induction,
there are many very significant "costs" which impact big
time on the quality of education we deliver. These non-financial
costs need to be clearly presented as well. Here are some ideas
about those costs.
- When struggling novice teachers receive no quality support or
guidance they remain focused more on their own needs and day-to-day
survival, than on the success of the kids.What is the cost of
this, even when such teachers are retained?
- What is the cost in student learning and enthusiasm about school
when struggling, unsupported teachers adopt coping strategies
that are less effective instructional practices? This tragic effect
is well documented and the cost in student learning is immeasurable
- What number of veteran teachers leave teaching or, at least,
lose their enthusiasm for their work and could benefit from a
new challenge and focus on a conversation about excellence in
teaching and student learning, but who have no appropriate avenue
for that?
- What is the cost to the district when excellent, gifted teachers
seek to make a greater impact and find the only role choice is
to leave the classroom and become an administrator. Such teachers
need the opportunity to serve as instructional leaders and service
as mentors is just what the doctor ordered. When such options
do not exist the resources and potential teacher leadership that
is lost is immeasurable.
- What is the value of a professional work environment? If mentoring
is defined to do so, and mentors are prepared so they can do so,
increasing the collaboration and professionalism of teachers will
positively impact the climate and working environment.
- What is the value gained when the students see that adults must
keep learning? Mentoring and coaching model for students the importance
of being life-long learners.
- What is the value gained when teachers work every day at getting
better at teaching and promoting student success? Mentoring establishes
the norm and expectation in the minds of new teachers that career-long
professional growth is an expected part of the work of the educator.
- What is the value gained when the Board of Education can demonstrate
it's support for teacher empowerment in positive directions that
contribute to district agendas. Mentoring increases the opportunities
for positive leadership by teachers.
- What is the value of ensuring that new staff are brought into,
adopt, and contribute to the initiatives of the district (strategic
plan, SIP goals, etc.) Mentoring is a perfect means of incorporating
new staff into the culture and traditions of the district.
- How can our organization
help staff define and attain their career goals?
- This question comes from Sreejon Deb, an HRD Manager in Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
This has been a tricky issue because many organizations worry that
if they build up the capacity of employees, the employees may leave
and take that investment with them. However, what we have been learning
about the factors that cause employee attrition and retention refutes
that old argument. Refer to the answer to the question about employee
retention for more on this.
Helping employees to set career goals is not simple. Here's where
to start.
- 1. Helping others set and attain career goals is essentially
a process of skill building and attitude adjustment. Your purpose
is primarily to give folks a sense of self-efficacy, that they
can influence, to an increasing extent, what happens to them
during their lives.
- 2. Define what your organization is willing to do to help
folks attain their career goals. Frame it within an understanding
of what retains quality employees.
- 3.Define what the organization cannot do.
- 4. Establish a mentoring program so that all the following
"help" occurs within a long-term, collaborative program.
For most people collaboration is practically a requirement for
reflection and self-assessment. Without collaboration, the will
and time for reflection is overwhelmed by the daily work.
- 5. Help the employees to define what their ideal career looks
like (set a standard for comparison)
- 6. Help them to create, show them where to find, or provide
them with self-assessment tools which compare where they perceive
themselves to be relative to where they WANT to be.
- 7. Help them learn how to set reasonable goals and intermediate
objectives to move their skills and knowledge from where they
are toward where they want to be.
- 8. Help them learn how to define action plans that will be
reasonable, yet challenging, and that will give them gradual
progress toward their goals.
- 9. Help them identify the resources, knowledge, time,
and skills they will need to attain their objectives and ultimate
goals.
- 10. Help them learn how to measure and monitor implementation
of their intentions and plans, and then, to celebrate progress
when they achieve an intermediate objective.
- 11. Finally, help them learn how to help others through this
same process by becoming a mentor. Do this all along throughout
the entire process by periodically having the mentor ask them
to answer three questions:
- What have you just learned? (Of course, ask this after
a mentoring discussion.)
- What did I do as your mentor that helped you to learn
that? (You'd like feed back about the effectiveness of your
mentoring, right?)
- Is there any way you can use that knowledge to improve
your effectiveness? (Sometimes the answer to #3 is not clear.
It depends on what was learned.)
Why should we
hire you as a consultant to help us? We were all new teachers once
& should know what to do. I agree this seems so logical.
to some extent you can trust your intuition as a teacher about what
new teachers need. However, I caution you that developing a high
impact program is not always as obvious as it seems. This is largely
because the profession of teaching has changed so dramatically.
Necessarily, our goals for mentoring have changed as well and what
it takes to deliver high impact mentoring is not so apparent.
I have worked with hundreds of induction and mentoring programs
and trained thousands of mentors and I have found that most peoples'
educational intuition and common sense are NOT SUFFICIENT to guide
them in developing mentoring programs, especially those that have
a high impact on teaching and student learning. If that is YOUR
purpose, I am not just the best person with which you can work,
I am the ONLY person who can help you attain that kind of program.
I have specialized in mentoring and induction of new teachers since
1985 and have tried to become an expert in all aspects of it, from
program development, to training, to problem solving. I have especially
worked to understand what makes a mentoring and induction program
achieve major results in improved teaching and student learning.
That knowledge base is the focus of all my current training and
consultation.
Since this work is my only means of support, I pay very close attention
to my competitors and I make sure that what I provide is unique
in the field. Believe me, IT IS UNIQUE.
I know that many people can provide you with some level of help,
often because they have a mentor program in their own district.
Sometimes just seeing how others do something is all the help, you
need. However, the problem with this is that almost all of these
people know a small segment of the knowledge base about new teacher
mentoring and induction because they have to focus all their time
on teaching kids, or managing buildings or programs. They do not
have the time to gain expertise based on a broad experience base,
across many kinds of settings. They can help but that help is often
narrowly focused, and sometimes, even misleading. Whether their
help is what YOU need depends entirely on what your program's purposes
are. If your purposes include transforming teaching and improving
student achievement, you can start accessing my expertise by buying
the information thatt is available in on my "Publications List" elsewhere on the web site.
However, I KNOW that at some point you and I will probably need
to work together in some depth.
I do not mean to sound haughty or arrogant. In fact, I am not that
way. I just have worked so much in mentoring that I know what else
is available out there in terms of resources, web sites, books,
consultants, trainers, program models, etc. etc. Lots of it is good,
but I have created and I have provided the kind of help I do EXACTLY
BECAUSE it is NOT already available anywhere else! It is UNIQUE!
Blessings on you and your vital work on behalf of new teachers
and their students.
Remember, I am the "Mentor of Mentors". Let me know when
I can help any further.
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