Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/supporting-teachers-as-learners/5021866/
“Our work as educational leaders is to mentor educators into their fullest selves, which is to say into the generous expression of identity and integrity.”Ann Pelo
Mentoring is essential to “improving individuals’ teaching pedagogy, practice, and overall program quality.” If you are reading this, perhaps you are a mentor, a coach, or an administrator interested in improving the early education experience of young children. You would like to begin or extend the conversation around how mentors should interact and what they should be doing in their mentoring relationships to support teacher growth. In this article,
I would like to explore the thinking that mentors should practice before engaging actively with practitioners, as the essence of mentoring relationships centers around supporting teachers’ thinking. This shift will create a transformation in teacher pedagogy.
One of my favorite quotes from Margaret Mead is “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” In my mentoring, I use the Thinking Lens,© a protocol for reflection and inquiry that promotes a thinking discipline that helps us see and analyze the wondrous and complex world of children’s play and development. What makes this protocol so innovative is that it does not ignore the teacher’s learning in ...