Lessons Learned: developing a new mentoring program

It is six A.M. I haven't slept well--I kept going over my syllabus hoping that it was good enough. The sky is gray and the moon is still watching me --the birds are not even up at this ungodly hour, just as well, they would only taunt me. They might find out that I don't know what I am doing. I enter the classroom an hour early. There is no one near. I silently rehearse my lesson over and over until I notice movement. This is more nerve wracking than the first day at a new grade school. I felt the blood rush through my body and I knew that my face had a crimson glow.

That was my first day as a college English teacher. Granted, I was only teaching remediation but I was still nervous. So many thoughts raced through my head and I felt an unsettling feeling of insecurity for the whole quarter. The first day wasn't so bad; I survived, but it took a lot of courage. I think the most difficult thing for me was my lack of confidence as a teacher. I had taught before, but this was a whole new experience and I just dove into the pool without even looking at how deep the water was.

I did several things to compensate for my lack of confidence. I dressed like a professional because a costume can really make you feel the role. I only met my students in the snack bar area instead of the shared office because I didn't want anyone to watch me. There was no formal mentoring program for me. I had to be creative to develop my teaching legs. I constantly asked the experienced teachers to look at my lessons and assignments and to give me feedback. I would take hours to grade one paper and then I would take it to two other instructors to check on my assessment. I read assignments and lessons that others had created. I watched other instructors nonchalantly as they were with students and I took mental notes. And in every class that I took as a student, I observed how my professors were teaching and I tried to emulate what I liked.

I became involved with the mentoring program for new composition teachers because of how I felt as a new teacher. I figured that I couldn't be the only person who feels insecure teaching after only taking one class for preparation. It is very different giving graduate level presentations than it is instructing students, who are paying good money, money they may have borrowed, for a whole quarter. The theory class is wonderful and it is good to know current theory, but there needs to be more practice applying the theories. The mentoring program gives new teachers (protégés) the opportunity to practice applying the theories in an actual writing class with more experienced teachers (master teachers).

There are several lessons that I learned from the mentoring program. The key to success rests with two elements; the first, the master teacher and mentor are compatible and can collaborate. If the master teacher and protégé are not compatible, no one will be happy. There is no need to do a Myers-Briggs to match people up, but common sense should dictate that two people with opposing views in regards to classroom matters and who possess certain amounts of quirkiness should not be paired up. If they are, chances are that they will spend most of the quarter arguing, debating and tattling. Collaboration will be difficult, the protégé may not learn how to teach, and the class may suffer.

The second element is that the master teacher must be willing to give up some of the control of the classroom so the protégé can teach and have authority. This essential piece is perhaps the most difficult. When I was working as a master teacher, I had to fit back the urge to control the class. I was worried that the students would prefer the protégé's teaching style to mine. I was afraid that the protégé would not cover the material that I wanted to have covered. I had to feel confident in my own skills. I also had to reassure myself and trust in my protégé.

The way that I built the trust with my protégé was by lesson planning with her. I designed the grand scheme and let her work within those parameters. Even though she could choose what she taught and how she taught it, there was always a common goal that we were both working to achieve. We conducted a lot of our collaboration via email. I would send a detailed plan for the week and include the times for her lessons. She would send me her detailed lesson and I would make comments.

We designed an attack plan and decided that she would gradually teach short lessons in the class and work up to one full class on her own to a whole week on her own. Since the quarter system is ten weeks long (eleven weeks if you include finals), we divided the class into three themes: weeks one through four, I was in charge, and she was the helper; weeks five through seven, we were equal; weeks eight through ten, she was in charge and I was the helper. When she was teaching, I made a point of not interrupting her, not telling her that time was fleeing, and I tried not to jump in and explain things in my own way. She had to develop her own teaching persona and not be a clone of me. She also had to make her lessons succeed or bomb.

One of the problems that we had was that my protégé did not really get much experience with classroom management. Since I was there for most of the classes, she did not get to experience many of the problems that can occur with freshmen at eight AM. She did have a week where she taught on her own and she had a few problems from a student, so she got some experience, but not much. She didn't have to deal with sleeping students or students who didn't their homework or students who don't pay attention while she was teaching. I was usually in the room, sitting behind the students and quashed problems as they occurred.

Along those same lines, often times, when my protégé was teaching, our students would look for me and ask me questions. They had a hard time adjusting and trusting in the protégé, even though I introduced her as my co-teacher. I was the authority in their eyes. To deal with this, I started leaving the classroom when my protégé would teach. I would get some coffee and stand outside of the classroom door and listen. I wanted to give the illusion that I wasn't near so my protégé would have full power as the teacher in charge. Sometimes, a late student or a restless student would find me and I would enter the classroom. The problem with this though was that some of my students felt that I was neglecting them and that I wasn't in the class enough.

Another problem with my experience was that I didn't let my protégé grade until close to the end of the term. The most prominent reason is because I didn't want to take advantage of her. The other strong reason is because grading takes a long time and I wanted to return the papers in a timely manner. I really wish I had given her more experience grading papers because it is a very difficult aspect of being a new teacher. I think though that the relationship we developed will continue and I hope that if she has questions when she has her own class that she will ask me for assistance.

This teaching relationship is a positive aspect of the mentoring program. New teachers don't have to feel alone when they start. Some of the other positive aspects were that for ten weeks, my students had two people to teach them. There was the people-power for 1:1 instruction and quality attention. I was invigorated by the enthusiasm of my protégé and I had to over plan and think about the goals of each lesson so I could explain it to her. I really got to think about the fundamentals of teaching compositions and my own teaching philosophy. Another benefit was that when I was sick I could call my protégé and ask her to take over. The previous quarter, I had a terrible flu and I still came in sick as a dog for two weeks because there is not substitute teaching pool in college.

However, a protégé is not a substitute teacher, nor is she a tutor or an assistant, she is a teacher in training. Hopefully, the training that I provided will help my protégé get some sleep the night before her first class begins. Well, I don't know if that can be helped--I still get too excited to sleep the night before the quarter starts. Maybe the training as a protégé will help her to have confidence in her skills and hopefully she will feel secure as a teacher and at ease in the classroom.

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