Professional social networks as a mentoring tool

[Ken Messersmith]

Connie and I have been talking about using social networks like this one to help support future teacher and beginning teachers. I have created a social network on Ning for our current students both graduate and undergraduate but haven't found a good way to make sure everyone gets a connection.
Connie also found an article talking about involving retired teachers in a supporting role for new and future teachers.
Any ideas about how we might do something like this?

[Connie Weber]

Scott,
Will you please join in on our mentoring initiative here on Fireside? Maybe you could be a mentor... and maybe you'll be able to bring in people who'd like to participate, either mentors or protoges?

[Daniel Bassill]

I think that the social networking forums on Ning are a good place for educators, or others interested in common goals, to connect. Connie does a great job of posting links to member web sites and blogs, so that the conversations can lead to deeper research through the web sites hosted by members.

I think that this could go a bit further. Here are two links to the library I maintain. One points to homework help and another points to blogs on education. A third points to fund raising issues. A fourth to a map showing how the knowledge on my site is related.

My library is interactive, so anyone can add new sites, and they can tell me if links are broken. They can even write comments.

My site is also very limited compared to all of the knowledge that exists.

However, it is an example of how social networking, or people getting together to share what they know, can be enhanced, by pointing to libraries and blueprints that expand the knowledge of the group, and show ways the knowledge can be sequenced in actions that support the outcomes the group is focused on.

Many public school web sites already are building libraries of links to homework help and college and career sites. Thus, linking these together, and using social network sites to help people find ideas they want, when they want them, along with the resources needed to put the ideas to work, can be the next way to maximize value from all of this knowledge and networking.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the steady linking to your endeavors. We can, indeed, have a "network of networks" about the studies and work most important to us. Mentoring, for instance.

What I'm talking about doing on Fireside is having mentors for student teachers and teachers who recently entered the field. (I'd say the first three years are critical--what do others think?)

Daniel, which people do you work with, mostly? You're matching younger people with adult mentors, right? And also you're building strong resource banks, sharing the knowledge, pooling it. I love the way you bring in and spread out resources, finding where they most need to go. Finding out how to have a positive impact on individuals, to open up pathways.

My vision for what we can do on Fireside is start small by gathering together some professors of education who are interested in piloting a program. They could require their students to jump onto the network and participate in a positive way. It'd be part of their course work. Students would set up their pages, blog, converse. Besides that, each student would be paired with an educator in the field (maybe a field far, far away geographically!) and the two of them would engage in monthly or twice-monthly individual correspondences. This could happen a variety of ways: google chat, Skype, phone, email.

Right now I'm thinking that Ken Messersmith, Janet Navarro, and Katie Robertson are likely interested (since we've all had conversations previously). Let's get some more professors, and generate a list of educators-in-the-field who are willing to take on a mentoring role. And shortly, we can meet together (Steve Hargadon offered us an Elluminate room) to discuss structures and goals. Sound good? Maybe this can be launched in the fall. We could start earlier if anyone has summer classes and wouldn't mind being part of an experiment.

I hope others share ideas on this forum. What I'm especially wondering is what would be most beneficial for up-and-coming teachers and new teachers (whether straight from college or coming into education from another field). Any thoughts about that?

[Nellie Deutsch]

Hello Connie and Ken and Members of Fireside Learning,

Well, the members of integrating technology ning have also been involving teachers in teacher collaboration and in a teacher mentoring system.

Why don't your contribute your input to what is already available.

Thank you.
Warm wishes,
Nellie

[Daniel Bassill]

I agree with Nellie, but would go a step further. When I say "network of networks" I mean that there are probably hundreds of different places where someone is hosting a great discussion with educators. Does someone keep a master list showing links to these? Or helping people understand what they are discussing and which might be more useful to some educators than others?

I suspect on most of these discussions would be the "I wish.." statements in which someone talks about a great idea or strategy that would be possible only if resources, time, talent, etc. were available to implement that idea.

Is there a place where these "I wish" conversations are being aggregated into "lets find a way" discussions? That would be valuable.

In short, the first recommendation would be to do the research to learn who is doing what, so new groups don't duplicate others, but support them. At the same time, this research could learn where the voids are, that need to be filled for the system to work better. If you can find this "need" the new group would seem to have great value.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Nellie,
Hoping you'll share your perspective and knowledge here on Fireside, as we begin an initiative for mentoring new and upcoming teachers. Got ideas of ways to link various networks together?

[Nathan Lowell]

We're in the process of starting up a kind of mentoring/professional development ning, too.

One of the things we'll be doing is pointing teachers to other resources -- wiki's, other nings, other training, etc.

I expect some of them will wind up over here because some of the best real conversations happen here.

[Connie Weber]

Thank you for the compliment on the network, Nathan. We'll be honored and very happy to have your teachers joining in here. Please let us know what you'd like to see--in fact, let's share all sorts of ideas. What do you think of a one-on-one matching of mentors and protoges in addition to free-run of the place (which includes sharing voices, work, and resources)? I'm eager to get some ongoing and purposeful relationships established, so people feel cared-for, and can ask for the particular type of support they'd like to have. Help with the planning, ok? (I know you're just sitting in the sun on the lawn chair by the pool-- eating bon-bons... You need an activity, right? ;-)

[Nathan Lowell]

The challenge with matching is that -- my opinion only -- it's more like "dating" than "working together." There has to be a chemistry that just doesn't happen unless there's some binding activity. The same issues of trust, fidelity, and -- in a certain sense -- intimacy has to be addressed and resolved. It's not *exactly* like that, of course, but I don't think that gets enough attention.

I see it in SecondLife all the time where people try to put expert and novice people into the "mentor/mentee" relationship and it goes about as well as a blind date. Sometimes they hit it off, but more often it's a hand-shake-at-the-end-of-the-night when it doesn't just end-before-desert ... or over salad.

There's more that has to happen than "i need a mentor/mentee" ... and I'm not sure how/if we address that adequately.

[Daniel Bassill]

The way we keep youth and adult volunteers together is provide structure for week to week activities, that takes them from the start of the school year to the end of the year. We support this with an email newsletter, and with coaching at weekly sessions attended by the youth and mentors.

I think for adult mentors to stay connected, at least long enough for a relationship to form, some sort of purpose needs to be in place which is important to the mentor, and the mentee. It could be supporting the development of an activity, or it could be supporting a third party activity. Several years ago I did a presentation at a business who wanted to create a workplace mentoring activity. One suggestion was that the people at the company focus on helping youth go through school and into careers, which would offer on-going ways for the adults to build relationships with each other.

From these relationships you might be able to create more "matches" and formal and informal mentoring.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Nathan and Daniel,

Thank you for your thoughts, and keep them coming...

No, I don't think of it as a dating or working-together relationship, something quite else. Here's an idealistic version of it:

I, a teacher at at small rural school--or an urban impacted center, or a school of outdated models and glacial change--I can find a mentor outside of that realm. Or I can offer to mentor someone outside that realm. I choose the match I would most readily contribute to. And who knows--people with similar settings and situations may like to pair up; it doesn't have to be based on diversity of settings.

What drives me to want to offer the networking mentoring system is what it opens up: you aren't stuck with only the colleagues, students, supervisors, teachers who are in your daily space--you can choose to go way beyond that. You can choose what to work on, with whom, and how. You can be doing something positive for personal growth--and for sharing of knowledge. You are in the driver's seat. It's not because of someone else that you're doing this; it's entirely driven from within.

The online aspect of the relationship frees it a bit--it would not be evaluational but truly supportive.

I do believe we should get a basic structure in place, and a tool for evaluating it maybe twice a year. If you'd like to plan out that basic structure with me, let me know. And all ideas, of any type, are welcome.

Level of commitment does stand strong in this. I was thinking there would be a basic plan of four structured meetings (via email, Skype, phone, even blogs) across the school year, more if desired (and I think there would be more).

Meanwhile, there would be forums running on the network that are specifically focused on the struggles a new teacher goes through. People would be responding to those to within the broad group--good fodder for more personal discussions between mentor and mentee. Questions that arise from the partnerships can get posted and discussed within the big group, and back and forth, lots of conversations would go on.

Even if we get this going in a very small way, I think it'll be worth it. I'd like to pilot a program, and learn from it. Seems this is the way to go with PLCs... reflective pratitioners... dynamic innovative leadership... upgrading the supports in our profession.

I imagine we'd have about 10 experienced teachers who could each take on 1-4 mentees (protoges?). Beyond that, we'd have professors sending their students here to participate in forums, share media and resources, and post some blogs--as required course work. Education professors would be cross-fertilizing each other's students online, along with the others of the network--all of whom are very interested in education. The time commitment need not be huge, but needs to be constructively ongoing.

It'd be fun to brainstorm ideas for creative productions--things that could be done beyond the basics of getting to know each other and pondering each other's questions. Think of all the multimedia-ways to collaborate these days. It'd be good for people to learn and practice, selecting from the banks of tools available... And we certainly have experts in that realm on the network, who could help with suggestions and technical help.

To me, it all sounds so fun, so productive. It's moving forward, doing the right thing, making an inroad in uplifting our profession.

I hope everyone reads Jennifer Lubke's paper on 21st-century Mentoring, and hope people check out Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach's Building Virutal Communities. (Both the links are in the forum under a response by Jennifer.)

[Daniel Bassill]

Have you every visited the Crossroads of Learning portal? They have some interesting technology for building connections between members. I don't see as lively a discussion as here, but what you've created is pretty special.