Answer to Question #272215 in English for Yolo

Question

Teaching practice provides experiences to student teachers in the actual teaching and learning environment.

During teaching practice, a student-teacher is given the opportunity to try the art of teaching before actually

getting into the real world of the teaching profession.

Discuss challenges in mentor-student teacher relationships you have experienced during teaching practice.

What did you do to address these challenges to the satisfaction of both parties involved in the mentorship

Answer 1

1. In the mentor-student relationships one challenge is when they do not share the same ideas about what it means to become a teacher. If a student-teacher teaching practice is not parallel with the teaching pedagogy that one has learned in their education program, it becomes a challenge to negotiate which practices to adopt from the traditional teaching methods of their mentor and which practices to implement from the standards based pedagogy one learned in their teacher education program.  

Lack of constant constant professional development from a school district one is based on. A mentor that lacks such training which aligns with both the standards of the university's teacher education program and with standard-based teaching concepts cannot understand his or her student-teacher teaching methods. Therefore, their teaching methods will always be different.

The lack of emphasis on the importance of feedback to the student. In a situation where a student-teacher is a novice a mentor may not realize where the student is in his or her development of learning to teach. When the mentor is a strong learner of various subjects and confident in teaching, it becomes difficult for him or her to understand what kind of feedback and support was necessary for a novice like his student who needs extra help with the teaching content. 

2. To address such challenges, one solution is that mentors need ongoing professional development, not one-time events, if their teaching practices are to be reasonably consistent with reform-based teaching.

Experience of apprenticeship with their own backgrounds and experiences with teaching perspectives, and newly learner knowledge and skills from their method courses. To help novice teachers to succeed in their first year of teaching, it is important to educate mentors about how to support their student teachers based on their needs.