TeachAde

sundeep baliyan

poor

Laura Zieger

George- I have found that matching the mentor and mentee are really important. The two need not be alike. As a matter of fact, sometimes vast differences create a better learning opportunity. The key, however, is open-mindedness on both parts. When I was assigned a mentor for student teaching in a high school, I remember thinking that the teacher and I were complete opposites. He had been teaching for over 50 years...very traditional. I remember trying to talk about cooperative learning and teaching with technology and having him call it all nonsense. By the end of the semester, I had learned a lot from his experience and expertise. A month later, I came to visit him and he proudly showed me how he had his students sitting in a circle in the classroom (he never before deviated from rows!). He also showed me a new computer he had bought to have his students create the yearbook electronically. It was a wonderful experience. We still correspond today (he has since retired and lives in Vermont writing poetry!).