Section 2: Defining Reflective Mentoring

A “Reflective” Approach to Mentoring and Mentor Training
 

Paying Attention 

Every era in history calls for teachers —and, by extension, mentor teachers, teacher candidates, and school- and university-based teacher educators —to pay attention to a particular set of issues. Ideally, the teaching profession responds, and the issue is effectively addressed. In some time periods and contexts, the issues of the day are optional foci for teacher education programs, future teachers, new teachers, and the mentors who work with them. But in 2021, these issues are pressing and deeply-rooted, and our world, schools, colleges and universities, and communities are required to pay attention to and address them. Today these issues include notions, practices, and policies related to  

• antiracism, equity, and diversity; 

• culturally relevant teaching; 

• trauma-informed instruction; 

• social-emotional learning. 

 
Defining "Reflective" 

Reflective mentoring in part means being aware of these and other factors and considering how they inform mentors, mentees, and mentoring activities.  “Reflective” in the sense that we —teachers and teacher educators, teacher candidates, new teachers, and mentor teachers —must dig deep and consider these issues and contemplate how we will explicitly address them; and “reflective” in the sense that our programs and practices and populations should always mirror the cultures, communities, and concerns of our world and time.