Mutual Admiration | Professional Development

mutual admiration

Intern Jackie Fraser gains confidence during her year of on-the-job training with a master teacher.

Barbara Howe, 43, is brand-new to teaching, "but it's what I've wanted to do since I was a child," she says. As she leads her second-graders in a discussion about maps, asking about their personal travels to build understanding, she hardly seems like a rookie. It helps, she admits, that lead teacher Larsen is perched on a desk just outside the student circle, listening and observing. "To have someone right there with you, guiding and coaching you — it would be so overwhelming otherwise," Howe says. "And to have someone of Nancy's caliber to learn from — she makes it look so easy."

Mentoring may be the official term for how the lead teachers help the interns, but it doesn't begin to capture all that transpires through these one-on-one relationships. The lead teacher acts as cheerleader, coach, counselor, critical friend, and more. The intern grows from novice into colleague, becoming another set of eyes on the children's learning, another voice in classroom discussions. Most of the carefully matched lead-intern pairs evolve into mutual admiration societies over the course of the school year.

Intern Kristen Hutchison, 26, admits she follows lead teacher Bieze around "like a puppy. We eat lunch together. I'm always asking her questions, and she's always sharing ideas with me, planting seeds." Bieze's steady tutelage has boosted Hutchison's confidence. Still, the intern worries that "there's so much on you as a teacher. I'm always asking myself, can I do it? Can I be what the kids need?" No matter how busy she is, Bieze manages to find time to address her intern's concerns, Hutchison says, "whether it takes five minutes or an hour. She's so good to me."

Bieze, in turn, loves the rookie's energy and appreciates that sparkle in her eye that reflects a keen interest in children. "Without these opportunities for mentoring, we lose too many of our best and brightest," says the veteran.

Although the interns learn plenty about the nuts and bolts of leading a classroom, they also pick up some of the nuances of the profession: how to pace themselves; how to frame the day, then reframe it on the fly if the kids seem overwhelmed by lunchtime; how to pull apart "the why" of things; when to reach for the phone to call a child's parent. "These are sophisticated subtleties I was never aware of my first years on the job," Bieze admits.

Bohanek also coaches her interns to strike a balance between life and work, home and school. "You've got to take care of yourself and keep this job in perspective," she says. "And it's healthy for the interns to see us struggle. I struggle every day," she admits. "All my lessons are not taught as well as I'd like. But how do I fix the mess? That's real life, and it's good for them to see that we struggle with these things, too," she says.

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