Fine Art of Mentoring, The

Many veteran educators, who have been the backbone of Montessori in America, are beginning to retire, and a new generation of educators is replacing them. And that is as it should be. No one is indispensable, and new faces with new ideas must be warmly welcomed. My hope is that these emerging Montessori leaders will have been well-mentored by those who have come before, not so they can follow dutifully in their footsteps, but rather so they can carefully pick up the threads of the past and weave them into a new and vital fabric of ideas just right for this new century and its children.

Is mentoring the same as having an apprentice working with you? The dictionary defines an apprentice as one who works under tutelage to learn a trade. I think that this more closely resembles the role of a supervising teacher and an intern, where a beginning classroom teacher is learning how to put into practice what she has learned from classes in theory and demonstration. Of course, there is mentoring involved here, too, but it is different.

In the "mentoring for leadership" role, the one being mentored is already a successful classroom teacher who now is moving into a new type of leadership role. This requires a broader view of Montessori education and the challenges that face its continuing success. Moving out from the more parochial view of classroom and school into the expanded role of teacher educator requires an enlargement of viewpoint and an understanding of the variety of classrooms and cultures under the Montessori umbrella.

Mentoring is an honorable and necessary profession that connects the wisdom of the past with the new and creative ideas of the future. The legacy of a mentor is not to clone a replica of his or her own thoughts and conclusions, but rather to provide an environment that fosters growth and original thinking on the part of those being mentored. The freedom to explore must be encouraged, as well as an ongoing search for new and better ways to assist others in their own personal journeys toward becoming future mentors to those who will follow. Mentoring must not be concerned with the imposition of caution, but rather with the opening of doors to freedom.

Cloning is not mentoring. You can't be a true mentor unless you are willing to release the one being mentored to fly on his or her own. You may hope that your ideas will be continued, but the successful mentor will be more pleased with creative innovation than passive continuation.

At the heart of mentoring is trust. Trust that the mentor is more interested in the one being mentored than in his or her own ego. If that sense of trust is not present, the mentored one will never feel free to fly like an eagle catching the updrafts and soaring to new and unexplored heights. Instead, she will be tethered to the mentor's version of what she should know and do and think. While the mentor can and will provide a model, there should be a clear message given that there will be many ways to reach a chosen goal. Share your views and how you came to have them, but leave the stage clear for new ideas and practices to emerge.

I have jotted down a few simple practices that I feel are at the heart of successful mentoring:

* Find ways to enable the emerging teacher-educator to continue his or her own learning through participation in many forms of education such as conferences, seminars, university classes on pertinent subjects, and participation in chat rooms and email lists for educators.

* Continually engage those being mentored in discussions of theories and practices of Montessori and other educational models using articles and books as stimuli.

* Encourage new leaders to make presentations at conferences to refine their own thinking while sharing with others.

* Encourage them to commit their ideas to paper and submit them to teacher education journals such as Montessori Life and the NAMTA Journal or those outside the Montessori purview such as NAEYC's Young Children.

* Team teach with a promising but less experienced teacher educator and encourage him or her to assume equal responsibility for course content and presentations.

* Encourage teacher education programs to undertake research on their own programs through the use of evaluation forms for students and feedback from schools and alumni. Analyze and discuss these findings with those being mcntored to plan changes.

* And, most importantly, see mentoring as aresponsibility and a privilege. As you are mentoring, think of the future not the past. You as a successful mentor have an important duty to perform for Montessori' future. Accept the views of a new generation of educators, help them find the threads connecting them to the strengths of the past, and let our rich legacy move on into the twenty-first century, continuously renewed, expanded, and refreshed, and as exciting as ever.

DR. MARGARET H. LOEFFLER is director of the Oklahoma City University Montessori Teacher Education Program and founder/co-director of the Teachers Research Network.

Copyright American Montessori Society Spring 2004
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