Mentoring: Reaching to Inspire

"Learning is finding out that you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers."
                                                                            --Richard Bach

I think I became an educator because I spent most of my young adult life looking for a teacher.  I desperately wanted someone to guide me, to mentor me and show me the way.  It took some years for me to realize that I possessed all MY answers – that we all have all the answers – and that mentors just remind us of that often.  I have since been very fortunate to have found amazing mentors who have reminded me often of my own knowledge and the ambiguity of life.

This semester I was fortunate to have two student teachers from two very different art education programs.  I always find it a refreshing challenge to mentor soon-to-be teachers.  They come with such great ideas, excitement and vulnerability.  They are so eager to learn.  In their absence, I find myself reflecting on teacher preparation and the mentoring relationship.

How do we truly prepare someone to be a teacher? We can teach lesson planning and curriculum mapping.  We can (to a certain extent) teach classroom management and we can provide classroom experiences.  But can you teach someone to be an inspiring educator?  Like pit-of-your-stomach-oozing-out-of-you-passion- for teaching teacher? 

So what does it take from the mentor?  I think it takes a mentor who is inspiring – who loves their work and projects that feeling onto his or her students.   A teacher who teaches who they are while setting boundaries.  For the final self reflection, one of my student teachers wrote “I have learned that being an effective teacher is not all about what I am teaching, but how I deliver a lesson , the type of relationships I build with the students and who I am.”  I also think it takes a mentor who remembers the fear and anxiety of teaching that comes with year one.  Finally I think it takes a mentor who believes in the student- teacher. To quote some unknown genius “a lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could”.  That is the power we have as mentors.

Use it often!

-Vanessa López-Sparaco