SCET Journal 2020

Reconsidering

Our Practice

fresh ideas to the classroom which are rooted in best practice theory. On Bridging the Gap through Mentorship and Teaching Assistant Positions Despite initially setting out to examine how nov- ice and veteran teachers’ perspectives about writing instruction differ and to understand better the nature of this disconnect, what I actually found is that an ideal combination of differences and similarities exist between novices and veterans to pave the way for a mutually beneficial relationship. This has led me to conclude that novice-veteran relationships via mentorships and teaching assistant positions can help veteran teachers just as much as novice teach- ers. Through the novice’s closer proximity to recent scholarship and best practices, her youthful energy, her willingness to take instructional risks, and his attachment to pet projects and favorite texts not yet formed, the veteran is rejuvenated. I, personally, can attest to this. I learned so many new ideas in the writing methods course about how to teach writing that have affected my own practice. This has been invaluable, but more invaluable was being surrounded by optimistic, hard-working, socially con- scious novices who made sure my passion for teaching remained intact. Although I was in a role of teaching as- sistant, I gained far more from them than they from me. Research attests to the benefits of the mentor-men- tee relationship as much for the veteran as for the

novice. Zuckerman (2001) writes, “veteran teachers can learn from their mentee about innovations in pedagogy and technology-based instruction and be revitalized by their mentee’s energy and idealism” (p. 19). Levin and Rock (2003) also report findings that support the mutual benefits of the mentor-mentee relationship indicating they both would become more reflective, critical, and analytical about their teaching behaviors in the classroom as a result of relationships built upon critical analysis of teaching and learning. On a broader scale, research exists to justify the benefits of effective mentoring for the recruitment and retention of novice teachers, but the real lesson here is that the benefits for the mentor equal if not exceed the benefits for the mentee (Gschwend & Moir, 2007; Lee, 2018). Implications & Conclusion In the portrait I have painted of the differences and similarities between novice and veteran teachers, one solution to improve them both simultaneously is the mentor-mentee relationship where paired veterans and novices learn from each other. Understanding how veteran teachers can learn from novices might have major implications for how mentors are selected and trained. Circling back to the epigraph which began this paper, “When you know better, you do better.” Veter- an teachers can learn to “do better” from novices; I know because it happened for me.

South Carolina English Teacher

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