If you decide to take on the role of mentor, it’s important to be ready to inspire and guide them. Those few months in your classroom will be unforgettable for a student teacher. The lessons they learn from you—both significant and minor—will stick with them for years and shape the kind of teacher they’ll become.

If you have ever wondered if having a student teacher is right for you, here’s a closer look. This choice has benefits for both you and your student teacher. You can also make a lasting impact on their teaching journey.

Why Should You Take on a Student Teacher?

Taking on a student teacher is your chance to pay it forward. Think back to when you were a student teacher, chances are someone guided you and now it’s your chance to do the same.

When a student teacher enters a classroom for the first time, they are full of enthusiasm and questions. They’re eager to soak up knowledge, observe, and gain hands-on experience. As their mentor, you can guide their enthusiasm. You can answer their questions and help them connect theory to real teaching.

A chance to shape their journey, just as someone once shaped yours, exists, allowing you to leave a lasting impact on their teaching career.

The Benefits for You

Taking on a student teacher doesn’t just benefit them, but it can also benefit you as well:

1. You’ll get a fresh perspective. Student teachers are learning all the new and innovative strategies so this can be to your benefit.
2. It helps you refine your own teaching skills. Explaining your choices requires you to think critically about what you do and why you do it. This helps you gain a deeper understanding of your teaching practices and identify areas for growth.
3. Having an additional person in the classroom can lighten your workload.

Once your student teacher feels confident, they can handle tasks like planning lessons, grading, and working with small groups. This will give you more time to focus on other important things.

The Benefits for the Student Teacher

By opening your doors to a student teacher, you’re giving them a safe space to learn, experiment, and develop their unique teaching style. Textbooks and lectures can only take them so far.

Your classroom provides the hands-on experience they need to understand what teaching looks like on a day-to-day basis. As a mentor, your role is to offer constructive feedback.

This helps them grow. From lesson planning to classroom management, your expertise is invaluable in guiding them through the learning curve. The teaching journey can be overwhelming, especially at first. Your encouragement and advice can profoundly help build their confidence and resilience.

Tips for Mentoring a Student Teacher

Being a mentor is a significant responsibility, but it’s also an incredible opportunity to leave a lasting impression. Here are some ways you can make a meaningful impact.

Ease Student Teachers into the Teaching Process

One of the best things that you can do is to ease them into the teaching process. Many teachers believe that student teachers should jump right in. However, others think it would help to ease them into the process.

Every few days give them a little more control of the classroom until they are ready to take on the day by themselves. Begin with one subject at a time. Slowly increase the teaching time each day. You will know when they are ready for more.

Give Both Positive and Negative Feedback

Offer your student teacher both positive and negative feedback. The more feedback that you give them, the more they will learn about themselves and what kind of teacher they are and will become.

Additionally, make sure that you word your comments in an appropriate tone. Try using the sandwich technique: start with a positive comment, then, add a comment about what needs improvement. Finish with another positive comment.

Explain Everything

Think of your student teacher as your shadow for the few weeks that they are in your classroom. As you move throughout your day explain what you are doing. The more tips and advice that you can give them, the better. It’s wise to encourage them to keep a notebook and fill it up with all of your tips, this way they can refer to these once they have their own classroom.

Allow Student Teachers to Deal with Students on Their Own

It’s tempting to step in when you see a student misbehaving. But if you do that, how will the student teacher learn to handle it? Instead of swooping in when you see something go awry, coach the student teacher through the situation.

Be an Inspiration for the Student Teacher

An easy way to make your student teachers feel comfortable is to encourage them every step of the way. The student teaching process is not easy, and it’ll take a lot of patience to get through it.

However, with your encouragement, you can make it a lot easier on them. Remember, you are their role model, their mentor, and the person they will rely on for tips and advice. Be as inspirational as you can be.

Mentoring a student teacher can be a wonderful experience for both you as well as the prospective teacher. When you invest your time, you will see that the next generation of teachers will create productive citizens. You will know that you helped make this happen.

Educators never stop learning; check out our available graduate degree programs  to hone your skills and promote lifelong learning and academic excellence.

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I personally have always welcomed student teachers into our school. I think about the opportunities that were given to me when I was an aspiring teacher. I had several mentors who gave me the guidance and feedback I needed to grow. Collegiate courses are valuable and teach the history and foundation of teaching, effective strategies, and allows for practice. However, the student teaching experience is unmatched in terms of preparation. The live, on-the-spot interactions, knowing how to manage the classroom, monitor and adjust, etc. is the highest form of learning that will best prepare any novice.

Challenges Student Teachers are Facing

Student teachers today are facing challenges that no other cohort of student teachers have faced. They are anxious to jump in and get their feet wet; to experience all the aspects of the classroom setting that they have learned about. Now, with virtual classes and even hybrid models with COVID restrictions, they are not learning the traditional components of school.

Currently, we have a few student teachers with us. I asked one of them about the challenges he is facing with our county being fully virtual since the year began. He mentioned that it is difficult for him to personally connect with the students. Being that he is not their formal teacher, he says he is struggling to make authentic connections, but over time it has gotten better. Relationships are essential between teacher and student. He stated that he was already trying to learn how to foster relationships face to face, but the virtual piece has added an extra obstacle.

He also mentioned behavior management. As we all know, behavior management face to face is totally different than behavior management virtually. Traditionally we would train him on implementing classroom procedures, how to create and enforce rules, how to manage students who are off task, disinterested, or misbehaving, and how to keep students actively engaged in their learning.

While virtual learning shares some of those same aspects, teachers now must learn to effectively manage the class virtually. These skills include active engagement through movement and participation through using online tools. Teachers must be well versed with digital applications and platforms. They must teach their students how to respond using these applications and the features on the platform. Virtual participation is dependent on these things. Our student teachers are forced to learn how to accomplish this in their own way.

Concurrent teaching is another challenge for student teachers. To be honest, concurrent teaching is a challenge for all teachers. Concurrent teaching is when a teacher is responsible for simultaneously teaching their face-to-face and virtual students. This is the newest form of teaching and no blue print has been created for it. Therefore, teachers all around the country are navigating unchartered waters.

Student teachers are learning from tenured teachers who would normally have a blue print to share. Now, all teachers, novice and veteran, are in the same boat and share the same insecurities about whether or not they are reaching their virtual students with the same impact as they would face to face.

What is a Mentor Teacher’s Job?

A mentor teacher is the lifeline for the student teacher’s success. This teacher becomes their go-to for all things school. Most ideally, the teacher and student will build a relationship and a bond that will last long after the student teaching assignment.

Mentor teachers are responsible for showing them the ropes and making sure they walk away with an experience that prepares them to confidently lead their own classroom soon after. Mentorship means that the cooperating teacher is an open book. It is the mentors job to “show and tell” everything that is relevant to teaching success.

This is more than teaching practice. It is also how to build relationships with students and families, how to engage students and manage behavior, how to find resources and be a valuable teammate, how to manage their time and be efficient with tasks, how to lead their teacher assistant to be effective, and so much more. Often times, student teachers don’t know what to ask so the mentor should lay it out for them and leave no stone unturned.

How to Mentor a Student Teacher

If you are lucky enough to be asked to mentor a student teacher that means that you are accomplished or distinguished in your practice and that is to be commended. It is an honor to be able to influence a future educator.

In an all-virtual model, cooperating teachers should be prepared to spend extra time with the mentee outside of the class to give examples of what full time face-to-face learning looks and feels like today. We are going through a national pandemic; however, this will pass and we will be back to some type of normalcy soon. It is important to prepare them for this. The bright side is that current student teachers are living and learning through this pandemic education and now have those new skills going forward in their career.

If you are a face-to-face cooperating teacher, be sure to give your mentee the most authentic, hands-on experiences with immediate and kind feedback with suggestions and examples for growth. Model for them and let them know all questions are valuable.

Cooperating teachers should be honest but not negative. It is vital to be honest about a teachers responsibilities, the paperwork, the meetings, and other issues that teachers would rather not have so much of but it is also vital to share with them the many positive outcomes of students and impacts that we make on them and their families that last long past the year they were assigned to you.

In education, mentorship only makes us all stronger. To build a strong and competent teacher is to build strong and competent children who will one day make our world a better place.

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