14th National Symposium on Teacher Induction

Day 1

Greetings from "Shining a Light on Great Teaching." I selected a 7-hour session on the Social and Emotional Well Being of mentoring new teachers. Below I have listed several reflection questions that I have not yet found the answer to-- I think presented Wendy Baron, Laura Gschwend, Dr. Lisa Medoff, and Sarah Young really got me thinking!

• When considering the best practices of a mentor, why isn't the "warm fuzzy stuff" or the humanistic part important? Don't mentors need to be loving, caring, listeners? Researchers don't really talk about that...
• What happens in a mentor-mentee relationship when the mentor loses resilience?
• If social and emotional well being of teachers is so important, why isn't there a SMART goal, teaching standard, AYP, or state measure tied to it? "Today you will move ___% in resiliency!"
• If the state does not seem to support issues such as the social and emotional well being of teachers, can I do it on my own? What needs to happen to get there?
• How do we (mentors) support teachers in exploiting their values of teaching and learning in their lesson?
• What is something I need to know about a person to understand them better?
• What questioning stems will I adopt as a leader and a mentor to foster a problem-solving interaction which opens the door to new ideas?
• Why is it difficult to sometimes feel empathy in certain situations? What is it about the situation that challenges resiliency?

So What? I learned there are four components to social and emotional well being of teaching and mentoring: social competence, resilience, school and classroom community, and emotional competence which all work together interchangeably. I think my biggest take away here is thinking about the mentor-mentee relationship as a parallel experience. The mentor needs just as much support has the first year teacher, and the mentor needs to be just as resilient as the first year teacher.

Now What? I will use this information to guide my studies in EDU 692: Issues and Trends in Leadership Seminar. The emotional well being and school culture is a topic that fits into the criteria of being something effected by school leadership, I am passionate about, and is currently a necessity in my school and those around the nation. Check out my most updated post on this information on my linked page titled Issues and Trends in Leadership and Mentoring.