My Teacher Candidate and I attended a full day professional development session, Mentoring For All: Creating Communities of Knowledge, presented through Peel District School Board's NTIP, Side by Side initiative in association with York University.
The purpose of the session was:
To develop knowledge and skills about mentoring
To apply three stances of mentoring (Coach, Consult, Collaborate) to engage in a learning-focused conversation with teacher candidate
To co-construct an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the host teacher and teacher candidate
To be reflective, present in the learning and possess an open to learning stance
As a minds-on, Mentor Teachers were asked to fill-in the circle map with words or phrases that WE associate with the role of a mentor teacher. We were asked to categorize these ideas into bigger ideas or possible categories. Teacher Candidates were asked to do the same. Then we switched our chart paper with a group of teacher candidates who wrote their expectations of our role just like we wrote our expectations of their role as teacher candidates. This was a very valuable exercise in creating a collective understanding for our expectations. The learning-focussed conversation that resulted through this activity enabled us to reflect on our own expectations from teacher candidates and link these expectations to what we value the most in our classroom programs. The link between our teaching philosophy and our expectations was very clear though this activity. We were also able to understand how our teacher candidates view us.
We continued our learning focused conversations on self-identified teacher candidate needs.
The purpose of the session was:
To develop knowledge and skills about mentoring
To apply three stances of mentoring (Coach, Consult, Collaborate) to engage in a learning-focused conversation with teacher candidate
To co-construct an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the host teacher and teacher candidate
To be reflective, present in the learning and possess an open to learning stance
As a minds-on, Mentor Teachers were asked to fill-in the circle map with words or phrases that WE associate with the role of a mentor teacher. We were asked to categorize these ideas into bigger ideas or possible categories. Teacher Candidates were asked to do the same. Then we switched our chart paper with a group of teacher candidates who wrote their expectations of our role just like we wrote our expectations of their role as teacher candidates. This was a very valuable exercise in creating a collective understanding for our expectations. The learning-focussed conversation that resulted through this activity enabled us to reflect on our own expectations from teacher candidates and link these expectations to what we value the most in our classroom programs. The link between our teaching philosophy and our expectations was very clear though this activity. We were also able to understand how our teacher candidates view us.
We continued our learning focused conversations on self-identified teacher candidate needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment