How In-Person Mentors Set ELP Apart

One of the researchers at Digital Promise assigned to ELP, Hillary Greene Nolan, is a former middle school English teacher. She’s been in the trenches. She knows how hard it is, and how much teachers struggle.

While working on the summative assessment of our two-year pilot program last year, Hillary was really impressed by the impact that In-Person Mentors (IPMs) have on New Teachers. In fact, she continued researching the importance of ELP’s in-person mentorship on her own.

Because of her unique perspective as both a researcher and former educator, we sat down with her to understand why IPMs are critical to retaining New Teachers and setting them up for success.

Here are her thoughts.

Teachers need emotional support, not just pedagogical 

I always say that “teaching” is the easiest part of teaching. It’s the only part you are trained for, and it’s the only part that most people think about when they picture teaching. But there’s so much more to teaching.  

The Virtual Instructional Coach (VIC) is formally focused on pedagogy, which is great. But the who and where are so important to teaching - not just the what, and that’s what ELP empowered the IPM to focus on. 

Anyone in teaching will tell you that it is an inherently emotional practice and yet you have to hold in your emotions because you are with kids all day. Teachers are so often expected to appear positive. Instead of internalizing those feelings of frustration, failure, self-doubt that all teachers feel, a New Teacher in ELP has a built-in support to process those feelings – the IPM. 

One thing both IPMs and VICs do is validate what New Teachers are feeling. We talked with lots of teachers who would run to their mentor or coach questioning how they had handled a situation, and usually their mentor or coach would affirm how they had responded and reassure them. 

Formalized mentorship gives teachers permission to ask for help 

So many teachers told us they are shy or that when they get busy, they turn inward. Because ELP formalized the in-person mentorship component, New Teachers knew they could reach out. They knew they weren’t bothering their mentor. 

At the same time, ELP shrewdly left the content of the interactions up to the IPMs and the teachers. The IPM is simply defined as providing support that is NOT pedagogical. But that’s it. It is left to mentors and teachers to figure out what teachers need, and processing, reflecting, even venting are all allowed and welcomed.

This is a weight lifted, because teachers - especially New Teachers who are drowning - think, “I can’t complain about a student interaction or how overwhelmed I feel because I need to talk about my lesson plan.” But in ELP, they have a VIC for that, which frees the mentor up for everything else.

Though not having strict mentorship guidelines was tough for some IPMs, I’m glad that ELP did not over-specify the role of the IPM. You can’t boil everything down to a list or a strategy. You can’t anticipate every scenario. It’s personal, emotional, based on talking and sharing stories, and they had the flexibility to make the most of that.

That ambiguity allows for creativity and humanity.

IPMs provide support that VICs can’t

On surveys, we asked New Teachers who they’d go to for help for issues such as behavior management, setting up routines, dealing with a student’s family member, finding resources for a new unit, etc. Nearly all New Teachers said that they sought help from both IPMs and VICs, despite the program saying the VIC would provide pedagogical and the IPM non-pedagogical support. 

But in interviews with participants, we found that when it came to certain things, they went to the IPM slightly more. 

For example, IPMs provide a lot of advice on building and navigating relationships with the school principal. I know one IPM told me that she instructed her New Teacher that if the principal “is walking this way, you can talk to her. If she’s walking that way, don’t!” 

We also found that they provide job advice when teachers are questioning their career choice. These conversations start with feeling comfortable enough with the IPM to wonder aloud: “Am I even good at teaching? Should I be here?”

Then, their IPM may say, “You are a great teacher, but I think you should apply to a job at this other school because it’s a better fit for you.” We can point to a few cases where a teacher was definitely planning to leave teaching and changed course due to a conversation with the IPM, which is huge for retaining early career teachers.

IPMs also help New Teachers navigate HR. For instance, one New Teacher found out she was pregnant during her first year and was afraid she’d be fired. Her IPM assured her that was not allowed and would not happen. In fact, the mentor took her to the superintendent’s office and helped her fill out the paperwork necessary for maternity leave and helped her prepare substitute plans.

Because of the emotional nature of the relationship, we found that many IPMs and New Teachers became genuine friends outside of school. One IPM was proud to report that she had even attended her New Teacher’s wedding!

ELP is “professionalizing” teaching

After four years teaching in a classroom, I attended graduate school because I thought I could somehow become an expert working on behalf of teachers to show people how hard teaching is, how great it is, and help support the profession so teachers could better advocate for themselves.

My training focused on teaching and teacher education, so ELP is such a perfect fit for my interests. It’s about professionalizing teaching, listening to teachers, and literally “educators leading the profession.” 

It’s been a privilege for me to work with ELP and get to know all of the participants over several years now, and it just strengthens my resolve to keep doing work that shows the complexities of teaching and supports teachers as they carry out such important work.