by Heather Johnson, SD 37 Secondary Gifted Coordinator
Being a part of the district teacher mentorship program is one of the most rewarding and inspiring roles in my professional life. During the past 3 years I have connected with inspiring mentor colleagues, followed ever-widening paths of professional and personal inquiry learning, participated in and co-presented at professional development opportunities with our fearless leader, Tashi Kirincic, and worked closely with ever-so-talented and -committed teams of mentors and protégés.
This year, my fellow mentor, Sharon Doyle, and I are working with a talented team of protégés who are in a wide variety of roles and buildings throughout the district. Our protégé team consists of several secondary teachers in the first years of their careers who are teaching subjects including math and science, French Immersion, learning assistance and alternate support. Rounding out our team are two elementary teacher-librarians new to their role and a new autism consultant from the Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders (POPARD). Talk about diversity! So when Sharon and I sat down to plan for our most recent meeting we felt that including a focus on current educational pedagogy would be a good fit for the wide-ranging interests and passions of our team. We also decided to talk about lesson planning, which is where mentors and protégés work together to co-plan, co-teach and co-reflect on a series of lessons or a curricular unit of choice. Finally, we set some key guidelines to ensure each participant would be allowed opportunities for both sharing out and being heard during our meetings. Decent sounding plan, right? Let’s just say that things didn’t go quite as planned.
First, Sharon was unfortunately unable to co-chair the meeting due to a last minute obligation. No problem, she and I had met the previous week to hammer out our plans and we were ready. The rest of us assembled at South Delta Secondary School, settled ourselves in and started with a check-in of how things were going and how everyone was feeling. In spite of it being one of the busiest times of the year, most of us reported we were on top of things and feeling relatively well, just a bit tired. Good feedback. Next on the agenda was chatting about current pedagogical practice and theory, which even when we’re at our most alert can be a bit of a challenge to digest. But not today – as soon as we started the conversational energy and engagement pretty much exploded out of the gate! As planned, we discussed and dissected a variety of pedagogical approaches including Class Review, Differentiated Instruction, Universal Design for Learning, Backward Design, Teaching to Diversity and Essential Questions. This was not a conversation for the weak of heart as it bobbed and wove all over the place. There were connections being made between subject areas, across the grades, between recent schooling and workshops and springing from school- and district-based conversations and meetings. It was a challenge just keeping up with the note-taking, what with the volume of questions being posed, requests being made and conclusions being drawn.
I had planned on teaching about Backward Design, where educators design curricular units with the end learning goal in mind, which allows for deeper student understanding. One of our protégés spoke up and said she’d recently attended a 2-day workshop about this, had the book and notes from it with her, said she’d be happy to share what she learned and she ended up facilitating this part of our meeting. Here was a powerful moment for me: our protégé was feeling confident enough in her practice and in the team to share her learning and insight with us and end up taking the lead in a very active and deep learning discussion.
A further meeting objective was to meet the requests of our POPARD consultant, who is not a teacher but is actively involved in the curriculum planning of the students she supports. When she joined our team she shared that she wanted to learn more about the BC curriculum. At the end of this meeting she told me that that it had been extremely helpful and informative and was going back to her consultant team to recommend they consider becoming involved in the mentorship process. She then went on to say that she was really looking forward to our next session. Goal accomplished! As we share some common ground and practice, she and I are going to see how we can work together this year for some sort of lesson study or professional collaboration that can be helpful in her practice.
So why did this meeting work so well? I think a variety of factors were at play. At the beginning of the year mentor teams were invited to construct their own teams based on commonalities between protégés as well as the skill sets that the mentors could bring to the protégés. As a result of this planning process, each of our protégés has at least one other individual on the team to collaborate with about their specific grade and subject areas. Another factor may be that we have met within our common geographical work areas, as only one of the protégés works solely in the North End. A third facet could be that Sharon and I are very compatible as mentor colleagues and that we share a strong focus on fostering a strong sense of professionalism and respect for our colleagues. I also feel certain that setting up our meetings with clear structure and information contributes to their efficacy. Lastly, I wonder if the strongest indicator of this success is that each of us, mentors and protégés alike, is actively engaged in and committed to the mentoring process.
The past few months have held some challenges for me, nothing earth-shattering, just the way it goes sometimes. Happily, our protégé meeting, with its unbelievable synergy, energy and just plain enthusiasm, came at just the right time to nudge me back into the realm of the possible and positive. Like our protégé, I can’t wait until our next meeting…