Reflecting on Goals at Mid-Year

In my last entry I made the direct statement that if you haven't had the opportunity to set goals with your mentee yet, the best thing is to just do it. Many of us have, on the other hand, established goals for our work with our mentee earlier in the school year.

January or February is when I usually reserve some protected time with each teacher I'm mentoring to reflect on professional goals and refine our intended work together for the remainder of the year.

Reflecting on professional goals at mid-year is important for few reasons. First, it provides an opportunity to note successes. Looking over our work together from the start of the year, there should be plenty of evidence of decisions made, next steps taken, and successes realized. This is rejuvenating! Additionally, this time for reflection may surface a shift in focus for a particular goal. For example, while at the start of the year a teacher may have been interested in developing cooperative groups in his or her classroom, by mid-year it may be time to look more closely at what and how students are learning within those groups. Lastly, it is simply helpful to take pause and remember the big picture. Our mentee's day-to-day teaching life can easily surface multiple topics for discussion that are based on urgency. While responding to such urgency is an important layer of offering support, we are simultaneously there to facilitate each mentee's broader professional vision for his or her growth and the success of every student in their care.

I've found that it is essential to reserve a day for reflecting on goals. The next time you are with your mentee(s), pull out your calendars and decide a good time to take pause and reflect.

What if We Haven't Completed Goal Setting Yet?

Three words: Just do it. Even if you are goal setting in January, it is always worth it to set goals for your work together. I'd recommend that the goals you set now focus primarily on your intended work together for the remainder of the academic year while taking into consideration your mentee's goals from the start of the year.

Creating Challenge

With the holiday season and a few weeks of much needed rest behind us, this is the perfect time to raise some mentoring conversation topics that create challenge in our work with our mentees. November is perhaps the worst month to take on such an approach - new teachers are often exhausted then, and usually only a day ahead of their classes. The holiday break brings quite a bit of rejuvenation.

Just today, I met with a first-year teacher and he was really happy with how his week was unfolding. He told me about how he was able to reflect on his classes over the break and how he wanted to change them to make them more engaging. As he put it, "I had an epiphany! I was bored in my classes, so my students HAD to be bored in my classes! I've decided I can do something every day to make the content I'm teaching much more engaging. We're doing hands-on activities outside, I'm doing demos more often, we're playing games to learn vocabulary, I'm working on making every wall in my room inviting and about learning. My students love it - and I'm happy today!"

Now with this type of motivation, my mentee was energized to hear about next steps he could take with his room set-up, more challenging approaches to weave into his vocabulary instruction, additional curriculum guides that could extend his hands-on lessons.

So what are some of the steps we can take to create challenge in our work with our mentees?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Dig into looking at student case studies. Look at their student work. Suggest next steps for mentees to reach out to the students' families. Note the questions that come up in your conversations and write them down on a Collaborative Log to follow up on finding the answer. Propose readings related to each case study student's learning needs and share insights together. Link mutual learning to future lesson planning and steps towards appropriate teaching strategies to differentiate instruction.

• Reflect on goals together. Rather than simply reflecting on how successful your mentee is at meeting his or her goals, work together to refine the goals towards more precise next steps. Of course, we celebrate any and all accomplishments that have been made thus far in the year, but the added layer of challenge keeps newer teachers inspired to continue to learn and grow.

• Design an Inquiry Action Plan. Action inquiry provides an opportunity to focus on a key question a teacher may have about a change he or she plans to make in the classroom. Together, you'll decide what kinds of evidence you want to gather to shape answers to that question over time. It's the perfect opportunity to encourage a mentee to try something in the classroom that he or she will stick with and reflect on using such evidence as classroom observation notes, student work analysis, assessment results, and lesson plans.

• Analyze Student Work. This is perhaps the most powerful approach to learning about what students specifically need to enhance their learning. It is a natural springboard towards a mentee making instructional decisions to meet those learning needs.

I find January to be an inspiring month for our work as mentors. It is a time of the year when the work becomes increasingly rich and focused on refining practice.

It would be fun to hear some of your January stories - and some of the successes you have accomplished along the way.

Thanks for reading!

-Alison.