Mentoring Principal and Superintendent Interns

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Mentoring Principal and Superintendent Interns

• Educational Leadership Programs
• School of Education, Drexel University

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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
  InductionThe State of the Art and Beyond. (2005)
  Hal Portner (Ed.) Corwin Press, pp. 149-165.

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3 Functions

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

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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

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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?

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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

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Facilitating a Professional Vision

• It is very easy for a teacher to get overwhelmed
  with the daily details of teaching.

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Facilitating a Professional Vision

• Mentors can facilitate a teachers or interns
  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 beliefs
  about teaching and learning.

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Stances CONSULT, COLLABORATE, COACH a continuum
of learning interaction

• Consult Collaborate Coach

Information and analysis
Goal Support teachers self-directed
learning.
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Consulting Stance

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

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Collaborative Stance

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

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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.

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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?

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Strategies 5 Principles of Practice

• Strategy 1 Teachers 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.

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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.

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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 across enduring
  understanding, core knowledge and unimportant
  concepts.

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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.

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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.

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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 interns case
  study.
• It shows how both the mentor and the teacher
  learned from each other in the experience.

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Mentoring Case Study

• Example of a Principal Interns Case Study after
  mentoring a teacher for 6 weeks using this model.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Session Strategy 1 Goal Language Strategy 2 Strategy Flexibility Strategy 3 Content Knowledge Strategy 4 Choice Points Strategy 5 Monitor Learning
1 Novice Proficient Novice Novice Proficient
2 Novice Proficient Novice Proficient Proficient
3 Novice Proficient Proficient Proficient Expert
4 Proficient Expert Proficient Expert Expert
5 Proficient Expert Proficient Expert Expert
6 Expert Expert Proficient Expert Expert
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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.

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Surprises

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

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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.

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Performance Rubric for Mentoring 5 Instructional
Strategies
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View a video of a Mentoring Principal

• Go to
• http//www.edutopia.org/principal-mentoring
• Principal Mentoring The push for new school
  leaders