Mentoring Tips

High Expectations

Build Relationships

Respect

Trust

Mentoring Council

January 9, 2008

Peggy Yelverton

321-633-1000 ext 242

If good things come to those who wait---just imagine what might come to those who prepare---they will become a more effective teacher.

PLANNING

  1. Time Management: Plan for one hour of uninterrupted time per day to complete tasks.
  2. Teaching is very demanding, but it is also the most rewarding and noble professional of all.
  3. Teaching requires a lot of paper work, planning time, patience, understanding, and empathy.
  4. Do not procrastinate- remember it is much better to be on top of your workload than to have your workload on top of you!

“If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.” Harry Wong

  1. Good planning is a skill, and it requires training, patience, practice,

and guidance.

  1. Airplane pilots have flight plans; surgeons go into surgery with a highly structured plan, coaches go into games with a specific game plan; and attorneys appear in court to defend their clients. We pay for those services and expect no less of them; therefore, we should expect no less of ourselves when teaching children.
  2. Being organized is important. An organized room gives a message that a teacher is competent and well prepared.
  3. In organized environments, students tend to be more organized, more respectful and better behaved.
  4. If your classroom is an orderly, highly functional place, the students will copy that environment. When teachers are organized and prepared, there will be less time for off-task behaviors.
  5. Procedures are established, materials are available, lessons flow smoothly and the whole environment is safe, orderly, and an inviting place to be.

If you know where you are going, you are much more likely to get there.

  1. Have well defined objectives set in your classroom. Can you imagine a doctor performing surgery without an objective, or an architect building a house without a plan, or going on a vacation without knowing where you want to go?
  2. An objective defines what the students should know or beable to do at the end of each lesson. If a student asks, “Why do we have to do this?”, then you have not made your objective clear.
  3. Plan for a substitute. Tell your students what you expect them to do, how you expect them to behave, assign roles and have more work than what is necessary for the students to complete.
  4. Know what the standards are for each of the subjects you teach.

What level do you learn? Find a mentor to help you, guide you and reflect with you.

  1. Teach when they are ready. Teeth come out when they are ready to.
  2. Observe other teachers. It may be that you learn something that you don’t like versus something that you did.
  3. Observe how other teachers setup their classrooms, how they store materials.Ask them questions, how do they grade papers, do they accept late assignments, etc?
  4. Learn from the teacher next door, down the hall and the ones who stay out of the teacher’s lounge.
  5. Find good books and articles to read or surf the internet for ideas.
  6. Team teach so you can watch how others handle themselves in the classroom.
  7. Relate lessons to real life. Make real-life connections with every skill you teach. If you can’t find a real-life connection, then it probablyshouldn’t be taught!

Teach Away

Teach, teach, teach away

Preach, preach all the day

You’d save your voice and I’d learn more, too

‘If you’d stop talking and let me do more!

Annette L Breaux, No Adults Allowed

  1. Lecturing is the least effective means of instruction. Think of learning to swim by lecture only. Can you do it?
  2. We learn by doing. Good writers become good writers by writing; good readers become good readers by listening and reading.
  3. Stay away from textbook reading. Instead of covering the material, UNCOVER IT.
  4. Textbooks should be used as a teaching tool, one of many resources that you will use. We teach students, not textbooks.
  5. Teach social skills. Don’t expect students to come to you with manners, knowing right from wrong; knowing how to work cooperatively, getting along with others or looking at you when others are speaking. Teach, practice, role model, and rehearse until they know them as a routine. Social skills are not a “fit it in” curriculum, but a necessity for an effective classroom.
  6. Greet students at the door every day as if you are really happy to see them.
  7. Speak in a soft, pleasant tone; don’t let the students make you raise your voice or lose your temper.
  8. Try your best to say thank you when students show appropriate behavior.
  9. Start enabling more student interaction, both with the teacher and the other students.
  10. Focus on students’ strengths. Say “I notice…” statements to them.
  11. Allow and encourage students to work cooperatively. Students who engage in cooperative learning activities develop problem-solving skills, develop better social skills, and achieve at higher levels.

Make learning fun!

  1. Avoid homework overload. If students spend seven and eight hours a day at school, should we send them home with hours of work?
  2. If you feel homework is necessary, then assign it, but in moderation. Five to ten problems in math serve the purpose versus 30 to 50.
  3. If you are one of several teachers who teach the same students, take turns or have certain days for your homework.
  4. When assigning homework, make sure that the assignments are interesting, meaningful, and doable.
  5. Model the skills you teach. Students need to see what the process looks like and listen as the teacher “thinks aloud” and models the thought process.
  6. Encourage active student participation. How much sitting time, movement time? 10-2 rule.
  7. Have high expectations and challenge your students to think critically. Understand the reasons.
  8. Use authentic means of assessment. Use real and valid means for assessing students’ knowledge.
  9. Vary your teaching strategies. Add an “element of surprise”. Variety and movement add to effective classrooms.

10. Make decisions based on what’s best for your students. DO WHAT

IS BEST FOR STUDENTS, ALWAYS!

11. Use students’ names in the your board work or bell workwhen

setting up assignments in a positive manner. Students enjoy

seeing their names being used in a positive way.

  1. Use hands-on activities to introduce a topic.
  2. Allow students to teach concepts.
  3. Allow for team building and class building activities throughout the year.
  4. Introduce objectives and standards with real life situations and activities.
  5. Utilize the 10 minutes of teaching to 2 minutes of reflection or teaching each other.

“The number one problem in the classroom is not discipline. It is the lack of procedures and routines.”

Classroom Management

  1. Start off to a positively. First impressions are very important. It sets the tone for the rest of the school year. It is more important to set the stage for success than it is to dive straight into the teaching of content.
  2. If the management is in place, the class can run smoothly.
  3. The lack of structured, well-rehearsed procedures and routine is what causes most discipline problems.
  4. Have procedures for almost everything. Consistent ways of doing things must be established in each classroom.
  5. Regarding learning and creating, set them free. Regarding behavior, show them the way.
  6. You must have a discipline plan, which consists of a few rules. Also need to have definite consequences when a rule is broken. Rules are devised to set limits, to help maintain order, and to protect people. Speed limits are set to save lives and protect.
  7. Prevent behavior problems through the structure of classroom management plans and proactive ways of dealing with students.
  8. Use the “Are you All right?” technique. If a student is doing something that is not appropriate during class, simply step out into the hall with the student and ask, “Are you all right?” with a sincere look of concern on your face. The student will usually answer “Yes” with a look of disbelief. You then say, “Well, the reason I’m asking is because the way you were behaving was inappropriate and so unlike you.” And then say, “I knew that something must be bothering you for you to be acting that way, so I just wanted to know if you were all right and to let you know that if anything is bothering you, I’m here for you if you need to talk.” That’s it, and then you walk back into the classroom and resume teaching. (101 “Answers” for New Teacher and Their Mentors, Annette L Breaux).

Teaching is like being a Greeter at Wal-Mart!

  1. How do you feel when people greet you with a smile and a nice word? Greet your students that way too. A simple smile and a genuine welcome will set the stage, every day, for a positive experience with your students. Students like to be where they feel welcomed and will succeed in positive environments.
  2. Learn what to overlook. Don’t be unrealistic and expect your students to be perfect.
  3. Handle discipline problems discreetly. Do not say or do anything to your students in the classroom that you would not feel comfortable having said or done to you in the faculty meeting.
  4. Handle your own discipline problems. Ninety percent of a school’s discipline referrals come from 10 percent of the teachers.
  5. Catch students behaving.
  6. Be proactive. Recognizing potential problems and stopping them before they become actual problems.
  7. Provide frequent stretch breaks.
  8. Use proximity. The simple fact is that physical distance equals mental distance in the classroom.
  9. Avoid down time. There is no such thing as “free time.” Teach bell to bell.

10.Put students at ease. When we are feeling anxious or nervous, our

brains begin to focus solely on ways to relieve the anxiety.

11. Our brains take much longer to process a negative statement than

to process a positive statement.

12. Display a calm, composed demeanor. Make sure everything about

you and your classroom says, “Welcome! I’m glad you’re here.”

13. Provide structured bellwork. Bellwork is an assignment that is

posted in the same place every day for students to begin as soon

as they walk into the classroom. The assignment is brief and

interesting to the students, and it relates to the lesson of the day.

14. Make the punishment fit the crime. Attack the problem not the

student.

revised 1/11/081