Today, I share a guest post by Margot Schou, who I had the good fortune of mentoring at the start of her career. With her permission, I inserted footnotes with links to some relevant further reading on my blog, website, and in the book I co-authored with Professor Robin Pemantle (There is No One Way to Teach Math — each chapter of the book ends with discussion questions for math departments, which mentors and coaches can use as they shepherd new teachers into our profession.)
— Henri
Mentoring and Coaching Teachers
by Margot Schou
I began my teaching career, fresh out of college, at the Urban School of San Francisco. How lucky was I to have Henri Picciotto as my first mentor? Nineteen years later, I continue to use his wisdom in the classroom. More recently, as I have had the opportunity to mentor and coach new teachers, his words have informed my work in a new way. I am excited to be a guest contributor to his blog!
No One Way
One of my favorite Henri-isms is: “there is no one way”. Teachers make myriad decisions for each class, and after every observation I like to ask about the choices the teacher made. “Why did you do it that way?” There is no wrong or right answer, but it is important to think about why we are making each decision. For example, did we want the students to understand how to do that proof, or do we just want them to have some chance of remembering the resulting theorem or formula?
For example, if I want students to be able to explain the formula for the sum of arithmetic series, I’ll ask them to repeat the process of copying the series, flipping the numbers and placing them on top of the original, adding, multiplying, solving several times with numbers before deriving the formula more generally [i]. For something like the product rule for differentiation, however, I don’t need them to memorize the derivation, but doing it once together in class gives them some understanding of where the formula came from, which hopefully helps them to remember it accurately.
So, I ask my mentees, what was your goal? Was the aim to increase collaboration, or for each individual student to self-assess? Did it work? Were we trying to get more participation or more reflection? How could we do this differently in order to achieve one or the other? I love mentoring because I always learn something about my own teaching when I observe others and ask these questions. It offers me such a great opportunity to reflect on my own decisions and to consider other ways.
In addition to “no one way” pertaining to our teaching goals, I also like to think of “no one way” as it relates to our own personal and unique teaching styles. To me, one of the most exciting things about teaching is that what works for me as a teacher might not work for you, just as what works for one student might not work for another. A big part of my job as a mentor is to help cultivate a teacher’s unique strengths. Teaching is such a relational profession: students will see right through us if we are trying to be someone we are not [ii], and students benefit from learning from a variety of personalities. Working closely with a teacher in a mentorship role allows me the opportunity to provide feedback that is specific to that teacher. Rather than generalized pedagogical approaches, the teacher and I can be creative about strategies that might work best for them.
My recent experience mentoring another math teacher exemplifies how important it is to teach to our own strengths and styles. I tend to rely on a variety of tried-and-true tactics depending on what is happening in the class in front of me – show me the answer on your fingers, give me a thumbs up or thumbs down, tell your neighbor and then raise your hand [iii] – rather than planning out in advance how I will encourage participation from my students. My mentee preferred a more structured approach. Another colleague shared a video of a teacher giving their students a “participation quiz” and my mentee and I discussed how she might incorporate this tool into her classroom. She made a version of the quiz that felt like her own, and it was a success. Especially as we aim to recruit, hire and sustain a more diverse faculty, we need to be sure that we are supporting and encouraging the perspectives and teaching that they offer. How are we setting all of our new teachers up for success?
Excitement
After observing one of my classes, in my very early days of teaching, Henri said to me: “Change the tone of your voice when something is important. Be excited.” As a trained performer, Henri taught me strategies like changing the tone of your voice, going silent, typing out and projecting on the screen your observations of the class. All of these methods can highlight important topics, concepts, procedures, and habits. I think of this advice nearly every day, and I regularly share it with new teachers. Quite often, teaching is a performance. I sometimes dance in class, and I regularly sing. Find the performance piece that works for you.
While Henri meant it as an act, in my own practice I have also learned the power of sharing my genuine excitement with my students. Sometimes, when we pretend to be excited about a lesson, we actually become excited. I have taught Algebra I more times than I’d like to count, so when I say “check it out this is so cool” when completing the square with students, I am not really being one hundred percent sincere until after I say it and remember, right, this is actually really cool! I teach math because I am passionate about the subject. I think that math is beautiful in and of itself, and I get to share that with my students. My hope in mentoring new teachers is that they will also love and be excited by teaching.
Coaching and collaborating with more seasoned teachers provides a unique opportunity to bring the excitement back! We can discuss various pedagogical approaches, try new things together, and learn from each other. I recently had the opportunity to observe an experienced Spanish teacher who was new to our school as part of a regular onboarding process. Being in his class reminded me of what it was like to be a student, the amount of processing time required and the energy needed to keep up. I could translate some of my experiences in math classes and offer this teacher different strategies for their classroom. This kind of collaboration allows us to always grow, and it offers a new perspective and opportunity to improve.
Make it sustainable
The first year at a new school can be overwhelming and exhausting. My role as a mentor is to help minimize the overwhelm, to show teachers that they are valued, and to support them in whatever way will help them stay excited about their job. This might mean helping to brainstorm a lesson plan, or observing a class and helping to problem solve a classroom management issue. It might mean encouraging them to go off on a mathematical tangent in class if it is something they and the students are interested in. I want to help them hold onto the joy.
I often remember when Henri said to me: “the time you spend on grading is spent on one student. The time you spend on planning is spent on a whole classroom of students.” How do we make teaching sustainable? For sure, being excited and joyful is a big part of that, but so is our time. In my experience, teachers like to talk a lot about how much work they do, how late they stayed up grading those tests or how much of their Sunday was spent planning for their week. As a new teacher, it can feel like if you aren’t working 24/7 then you aren’t doing enough. As a mentor, I try to debunk this myth and gear these conversations towards efficiency. Sometimes, I will sit down and grade with a new teacher to show them where they can take less time. After all, we give feedback every time we answer a student’s question in class. We develop relationships with our students so they feel comfortable asking a question about their test.
I encourage teachers to assign test corrections done as homework because, rather than the teacher taking the time to explain how the student got a problem wrong, the student can do the work of figuring out their mistake and correcting it. This not only saves the teacher time, but it also helps the student fully process their error, it encourages them to actually get help when they need to rather than glossing over a teacher note on the test, and it provides the student with the opportunity to deeply learn from their mistakes [iv]. I’ll also often help new teachers with lesson planning, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. As one of my mentees put it, “I am going to be a much better teacher in class tomorrow if I go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.” Our teachers will be better when they are happy and fulfilled, when they take time for themselves. In the long run, the well-being of our teachers is paramount.
Providing a teacher with a mentor could only support and strengthen that teacher’s well-being. And, a good mentor can help set a teacher up for a sustainable and successful career in education. I have been very fortunate to have great mentors, and I hope that our schools will continue to invest in mentors and coaches in order to support and sustain the next generation of teachers.
[i] See Understanding Sequences and Series for lessons that implement this approach, and for a 10-minute video that shares the underlying pedagogy.
[ii] I made a similar point in Dear Young Teacher, and I included an updated and improved version of that letter as an appendix to There is No One Way to Teach Math.
[iii] I learned these “tried-and-true tactics” and other discussion-management techniques from Project SEED in my first year of teaching. See pp. 142-146 and 157-160 of There is No One Way to Teach Math.
[iv] Test corrections are an alternative to “retakes”. I discussed them in a blog post, and on pp. 192-195 of There is No One Way to Teach Math. (In fact, Chapter 11 of that book is all about assessment.)
Thanks, Margot! As it turns out, some of the ideas I shared with you back then I had learned from my own mentors in the 1970’s! All of us are part of a profession, and our individual practice is immeasurably enriched by mentoring, coaching, and more generally by every sort of collaboration. You are an inspiring example of that.
To follow up on this post, readers might take a look at Mentoring Young Teachers. And for more Henri-isms, see Catchphrases.
— Henri
Henri's Math Education Blog 