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Teachers Benefit From E-Mentors

Posted on: Thursday, 16 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Edie Grossfield, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Mar. 16--Here's advice from a former military officer-turned-middle school teacher to anyone who thinks K-12 teaching is a cake walk: Think again.

Mark Ryan, an eighth-grade science teacher at Willow Creek Middle School, was a chief petty officer before making a mid-career change to teaching.

"I had been through all the (military) training and everything else. And I walked up in front of the classroom, and at the end of my first day I said to myself, 'What in the heck makes me think I can do this?'"

Thirteen years later, Ryan still remembers what it's like to struggle through the first year of teaching, and he's using his experience to help rookie Alethea Montgomery, a middle school teacher in Duluth public schools.

Ryan is an "eMentor" to Montgomery through Education Minnesota's eMentoring program.

Now in it's third year, the state teachers union program matches experienced teachers with first-year teachers. Because it is done through e-mail, geography isn't a factor.

Ryan and Montgomery e-mail each other about once a month. As she works to keep up with three classes in two schools, Montgomery has a lot of questions for Ryan. Much of what she seeks is advice about things she didn't learn in college teaching courses.

"A lot of it has to do with classroom management," Montgomery said from a classroom in Duluth's Woodland Middle School. "Like grouping, how do you set up this, how do you work through the textbook, and how do you make sure you're meeting the state standards as well as the national science standards?"

Officials say the eMentoring program is important for the thousands of new teachers, such as Montgomery, who work in Minnesota districts with no mentoring programs of their own. That's about half of the state's more than 300 districts, said Education Minnesota's Field Operations Manager Sara Gjerdrum.

Closer isn't always better

There are obvious advantages to having a mentor just down the hall rather than hundreds of miles away. However, there are distinct benefits to the eMentoring relationship as well, Gjerdrum said.

"While the on-site mentoring offers someone right there to answer your question immediately and who knows the situation ... sometimes that can get in the way of teachers finding their own best answers," Gjerdrum said, adding that receiving an outside perspective on a variety of issues can be an important benefit for new teachers.

Although phone calls to Ryan are an option of the program, Montgomery said she prefers e-mails.

"I'm happy with that, just because a lot of times I can jot something and send it away. And I'm afraid if it was phone communication, it would get too lengthy instead of just targeting that one specific question," Montgomery said.

The eMentoring program now has about 50 pairs of eMentors/eMentees throughout Minnesota, which is about a fourth of the program's initial size. Education Minnesota reduced the program after it found that quantity wasn't necessarily meaning quality, Gjerdrum said.

"The problem was that, oftentimes, there wasn't any ongoing relationship between the (eMentors and eMentees). So, this year, we reformatted to have some clear expectation that you're going to have more frequent contact and you're really going to look at your classroom practice together," Gjerdrum said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

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Source: Post-Bulletin

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