Mentoring New Teachers

The advantage of working with trainee teachers (Teach First teachers) when you have been teaching for a long time is that it takes you back to the beginnings of things like classroom management 1.01 and behaviour management basics. Building Relationships and Expectations are crucial in the first few weeks.  Tamaki College has a set of values called RISE (Respect, Integrity, Success, Responsibility) which are embedded into the vision and ways of working in the school. The students are familiar with these and they work well. The teacher will also set other expectations to do with behaviour, work, tools, listening and following instructions. These will all enable the development of positive relationships between teacher and students and so make the teaching and learning more productive. See building relationships with Pasifika students here  and with Māori students here . Setting up a routine and sticking to it is also crucial to developing a good and safe physical and emotional

There is a very useful resource here   which gives e-learning links, guides and tools that you can use when working digitally with students. There are examples for each of the 12 PTC including some good stuff on e-learning and teaching as inquiry for Criteria 4 & 12.

This year I have been appointed to the role of Specialist Classroom Teacher and Mentor Teacher for Teach First Teachers and Provisionally Certificated Teachers at Tamaki College.I had a vague idea as to what a Teach First Teacher was so I went to this site  http://teachfirstnz.org/  and found stories and videos from the participants themselves. I was pleased to see that Tamaki College is a Manaiakalani school as this will push me further in my digital journey. Already I am having to create a Google site which I haven't done before and as part of my appraisal create a blog which will evidence my learning journey. I dragged my dinosaur colleagues into Blogger last year so this is not new. Last year's blog was a collaboration to investigate the true meaning of collaboration through readings and the practicalities of working together to construct knowledge. This year I will be spending a lot of time in the classroom with the 11 teachers I am supporting.