Mentoring Principal and Superintendent Interns

1. Mentoring Principal and Superintendent Interns Educational Leadership Programs School of Education, Drexel University

2. A Model for Mentoring Teachers, Principal Interns and Superintendent Interns* To establish a learning-focused relationship, this model uses: • 3 Functions • 3 Stances • 5 Instructional Decision-making Strategies * Lipton, L. and Wellman, B. “Cultivating Learning-Focused Relationships Between Mentors and their Protégés,” in Teacher Mentoring and Induction:The State of the Art and Beyond. (2005)Hal Portner (Ed.) Corwin Press, pp. 149-165.

3. 3 Functions The teacher will benefit from a mentor who: • Offers support • Creates challenges and • Facilitates a professional vision

4. Offering Support Support can come in several forms: • Emotional - within a context for listening and sharing • Physical - perhaps helping with room, school or district resources • Instructional - providing necessary curricula, aligning content to standards, data-gathering procedures • Institutional - learning school and district procedures and policies

5. Mentors can ask themselves: • Am I a good listener? • Do I roll up my sleeves and pitch in to help arrange tables and chairs for a teacher, school schedules for a principal intern, or provide the district budget and board meeting schedule for a superintendent intern? • Do I begin with sharing the school/district vision for 21st century learning and provide the necessary instructional and assessment information to carry out that vision?

6. Creating Challenge A mentor needs to find the right level of challenge. A mentor can use opportunities such as: • Instructional planning • Clarifying instructional goals • Problem finding and framing • Problem solving

7. Facilitating a Professional Vision It is very easy for a teacher to get overwhelmed with the daily details of teaching.

8. Facilitating a Professional Vision Mentors can facilitate a teacher’s or intern’s “reflections on practice” toward a professional vision by: • Modeling their own professional practice and lifelong learning, • Helping the teacher or intern set high expectations with National Standards, and • Helping the intern examine his/her core beliefsabout teaching and learning.

9. Stances: CONSULT, COLLABORATE, COACHa continuum of learning interaction Consult Collaborate Coach Information and analysis Goal = Support teacher’s self-directed learning.

10. Consulting Stance In the Consulting Stance, the mentor supplies information and identifies critical gaps.

11. Collaborative Stance In the Collaborative Stance, the mentor and the protégé co-develop ideas and analysis.

12. Coaching Stance In the Coaching Stance, the protégé produces information and analysis. The mentor can paraphrase and raise questions to increase awareness, enlarge perspectives and clarify details.

13. A mentor can ask: Can I identify which stance is most appropriate to use in this specific interaction? • 2 ways to determine this are: • Where is the information coming from? The protégé or the mentor? Or both? • What is the source of the gap analysis? The protégé or the mentor? Or both?

14. Strategies: 5 Principles of Practice Strategy 1 = Teacher’s Instructional Goals • Novice: Teacher uses an outside source for the instructional goal. • Expert: The teacher uses understanding of content and the students’ learning needs to set instructional goals.

15. Strategies: 5 Principles of Practice Strategy 2=Teaching Strategy Detail • Novice: Teacher uses “activity thinking.” • Expert: The teacher can meet specific outcomes and modify them for differentiating instruction.

16. Strategies: 5 Principles of Practice Strategy 3 = Content Knowledge Depth • Novice: Teacher does not understand “foundational learning” in a subject area. • Expert: The teacher has a depth of content knowledge, can distinguish acrossenduring understanding, core knowledge and unimportant concepts.

17. Strategies: 5 Principles of Practice Strategy 4 = Ability to generate choice points • Novice: The teacher needs to learn to monitor student learning as he/she teaches. • Expert: The teacher can draw from a repertoire to make “in the moment” revisions to the initial plan of instruction.

18. Strategies: 5 Principles of Practice Strategy 5 = Depth of Evidence & Data • Novice: The teacher needs to learn“what to look for” as students learn and ways to assess formative/summative performance. • Expert: The teacher uses continuous assessment of student learning to inform future action.

19. Drexel Principal Interns practice mentoring a teacher for 6 weeks. • The principal intern then prepares a Case Study of their results to the class. • The Lipton/Wellman model is used. • What follows is an example of one intern’s case study. • It shows how both the mentor and the teacher learned from each other in the experience.

20. Mentoring Case Study Example of a Principal Intern’s Case Study after mentoring a teacher for 6 weeks using this model.

21. Mentoring Relationship Consult Collaborate Coach Three Mentoring Stances • In using the three stances, I learned that the mentoring process is a transition from consulting to coaching. • In the beginning, it is natural to consult your protégé by providing information and advice. • The mentoring relationship should move to the collaborative stage in which there is a co-development of ideas and approaches. • The mentoring relationship should transition to the coaching stage so that the protégé is able to take ownership of his or her own instructional decision making.

22. Results of Mentoring • Transitions were made from consulting to coaching over the course of six weeks. • Percentages of mentoring stances are shown on the graph for each session.

23. Results of Mentoring • With each session, the protégé was able to advance from novice to proficient or expert in each of the five critical decision making strategies.

24. Conclusions Reached • Mentoring allows the mentor the opportunity to reflect on practices and philosophies. • It may be necessary to employ multiple stances during a mentoring session, depending on the needs of the protégé and the specifics of the critical decision making strategy that is being focused on during the mentoring session. • The most effective mentoring stance is coaching, in that the protégé has internalized the ability to make constructive instructional decisions.

25. Surprises • Valuable lessons can be learned by the mentor as well when the mentoring relationship transitions from consulting to coaching. • Reflection of one’s own teaching practices and philosophies occurs naturally in a constructive mentoring relationship.

26. Lessons to Share • Mentors need to reflect on their own teaching practices and philosophies in order to effectively guide their protégé into his or her own reflective practice. • It is important to develop a strong rapport with your protégé in the beginning of the mentoring relationship. • Learning is on going for both the mentor and the protégé.

27. Performance Rubric for Mentoring 5 Instructional Strategies

28. View a video of a Mentoring Principal • Go to: • http://www.edutopia.org/principal-mentoring • Principal Mentoring: The push for new school leaders