Parallel Mentoring as a Teacher Retention Strategy
Previously, I wrote about the need for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) for adult learners in schools. Teachers, lifelong learners by trade, are desperate for high-quality professional learning opportunities. Mentoring is a particularly powerful option because it can be served in two ways. First, as a mentor to students, teachers benefit from forging deep connections with kids. Second, being mentored by another teacher in the building creates channels for teachers to share and gather wisdom, decrease isolation, and grow trusted friendships. Together, these parallel (and inexpensive) mentoring strategies can be used to increase teacher retention.
As a new teacher in 2001, I was essentially on my own at a small public high school in the middle of Manhattan. Though my colleagues were very kind and supportive, they were all focused on their own curriculums, their own classrooms, and their own experiences. I was way out of my depth — struggling, drowning even. I sought professional development for myself, because even though I’d just graduated from Ed School with a Master’s in Secondary Social Studies Education, I honestly had no idea what I was doing.
Not surprisingly, my students had no idea what they were doing either. They were over-stressed and under-credited, reading way below grade level and otherwise failed by the New York City public school system. Yet, they were still determined to get a high school diploma.
It felt ridiculous, like some sort of psychology experiment. We all needed some wins, so I focused on something I felt pretty competent in: relationship-building.
Mentoring Students
By focusing on the “advisory” period I taught, I got to really know my students. And I quickly learned that I could leverage those relationships in academic courses. Because I knew them so well, I knew how to engage them with the content. And because they knew and trusted me, they were more invested in the content I presented.
I’m still in touch with many of those kids. Now, 20 years later, I am still celebrating their successes, grieving with them when there are setbacks, supporting them, and mentoring them. Those relationships kept me in the classroom year after year. I was totally dedicated to my students and their families.
My story is not unique. The Power of Mentoring, Gradient Learning’s 2022 poll on mentorship in schools, surveyed over a thousand teachers across the country.
The findings overwhelmingly illustrate that teachers WANT to mentor students. In fact, 95% of the teachers surveyed believe that every student can benefit from a mentor. Additionally, 85% of those same teachers said that participating in a mentoring program contributes to their overall job satisfaction. Mentoring is an example of a strategy that builds and improves teacher efficacy. Teachers with strong self-efficacy tend to have more longevity and be more resilient (Donohoo, 2016).
Mentoring Adults
In her seminal book, Leading Adult Learning, author and Professor of Education Leadership, Ellie Drago-Severson shares her four pillar practices for adult learning. Mentoring, or “building meaningful and growth-enhancing relationships,” (p. 211) is one of them. Drago-Severson presents mentoring as a holding environment for growth, a relationship that can provide support while providing opportunities to stretch and risk-take, (Drago-Severson, 2009). It is certainly less frightening to take risks when you have a safety net. Teaching can be so isolating, and mentoring helps foster relationships between adults, supports change management, and makes space to share best practices (Drago-Severson, 2009).
When mentoring is used, often it is as a support for new teachers. Personally, I would have loved a mentor to guide me back when I was a new teacher.
The New Teacher Center, one of the preeminent organizations supporting new teachers specifically, convinced me of this. Their 2019 report, Counting the Cost, showed that mentoring new teachers increase teacher retention rates. But the fact is, all teachers would benefit from being mentored, not just those new to the field (Drago-Severson, 2009).
As I got better at my craft, I began to take on student teachers (graduate students) who would plan with me, observe me teach, debrief with me and gradually take over my class. Though I was the “cooperating teacher,” or mentor, my experience was such that I learned as much from them as they did from me. Working with and supporting those student teachers as they began their work strongly influenced me to become a full-time mentor for new teachers and then later, an instructional coach.
Powerful Practices: The parallel processes of mentoring while being mentored
In an ideal world, every teacher and every student would have a mentor. So my recommendations are:
- To push for/lean into/participate in school-based mentoring programs for students.
- To push for/lean into/participate in school-based or district-wide mentoring programs for teachers.
Unfortunately, while the bullets above are super powerful practices, they may not be within the locus of your control as a teacher or as a school leader. So let me share an anecdote and then offer one that is in your sphere of influence:
Recently, I was speaking with my friend Jared Francis, principal of DREAM Charter High School in Harlem. He was trying to get perspective on a leadership dilemma. He shared that he was about to assemble his cabinet to figure it out. Curious, I asked, “What is a cabinet?” Jared explained that over the course of his career he has collected an assortment of mentors. By building meaningful and lasting relationships with practitioners he admires, he has created a cabinet of trusted advisors who know him from different points in his professional journey. He calls upon these mentors regularly, and by doing so, he cultivates the relationships and grows from the conversations.
As adults, we can all point to other adults who have helped us get through, by supporting us, guiding us, and growing us. All children should be able to have that too. Because mentoring is a low-cost, high-impact strategy, it should be very appealing to write into PD plans.
Given the current conditions of teaching right now, heading into year three of a global pandemic, we must find ways to value and invest in our teachers, or they will leave. Both being mentored and mentoring others is bucket-filling. And this kind of bucket-filling lends itself to teacher retention.
Consider these practices, then, in lieu of the ideal scenario:
- Make space for teachers to informally mentor one or more students. This may look like a lunch club or early morning check-ins or check-outs at the end of the school day — totally voluntary on both sides.
- During a staff meeting, invite teachers to make a list (privately) of all the people in their lives who have informally or formally mentored them. Have them reach out to one via text or phone call at that moment. Connection is so powerful. Reaching out to a mentor might truly make their day.
Introducing the parallel processes of mentoring while being mentored is an effective way to reinvest in our valuable human capital and further professionalize the field.
