We spoke with Principal Brooke Will about how her experience as an NTC-supported mentor informed her role as a school leader.
The research on teacher retention and working conditions is pretty clear about the importance of having a mentor or coach. We also know that a thoughtful and comprehensive induction experience is a key factor in teacher retention and a stepping stone to continued professional growth for new teachers. This critical transition period into the classroom can’t be left to chance. Beginning teachers need support not only to manage the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day but also to accelerate the development of the skills and confidence they need as professionals.
And the impact of mentoring goes well beyond new teacher support. For many mentors, it’s a pathway to teacher and school leadership. Brooke Will, former principal of Madelia Elementary in Madelia, Minnesota, is just one example. After receiving intensive training in NTC’s comprehensive, relationship-based, instructionally focused induction model, she subsequently served as a mentor for new teachers then as an instructional coach for veteran teachers, a university supervisor for pre-service teachers, and a professional learning designer, before moving into administration.
Brooke said that mentors are key to helping new teachers focus on the foundational mindsets they need to become the educators their students need them to be — knowing who their learners are and building a practice of reflecting and analyzing what happens in the classrooms that helps them grow. She also observed that quality mentoring can have a ripple effect throughout the whole school, serving as the cornerstone of the kind of deeply relational instructional culture teachers deserve and that helps them do their jobs and do them well.
“As a former mentor myself, I’ve seen firsthand the impact quality mentoring can have. You see new teachers growing more confident, learning to succeed, becoming professionals, and moving into leadership roles. As a principal, it’s an understanding and a responsibility I brought to my position. Mentoring influences the entire school community, building an ethos of collaborative professional learning and a peer culture that embraces improvement.”
Bringing a mentoring mindset to a leadership role
According to Brooke, her experience as a mentor bolstered her effectiveness as an administrator and instructional leader. “I gained considerable knowledge about keeping new teachers in the classroom and coaching educators at different career stages to continue their development. As a mentor and coach, I worked collaboratively alongside teachers to encourage them to do the thinking rather than being the giver of knowledge. As a professional learning practice, mentoring taught me the skill set of how to sit with a teacher, ask the right questions, and guide conversations so that teachers analyze their own practice and come up with their own answers and solutions.”
Brooke said that after becoming a school leader she continued to use her “mentor muscles” in her principal evaluator role, a practice she’s proud of. “I think my teachers would say my leadership style is one of respect and trust. I truly believe it’s the key to affecting change in teachers. When you come down harsh on a teacher — you’re doing this wrong and this wrong and this wrong — they get defeated. With my instructional coaching background, I always start with, ‘Hey, here are some great things I saw you doing. Here are some areas of growth. How can we work on this?’ Then I create the space for them to develop those ideas, providing support and resources as needed. Yes, I do have to evaluate them on a rubric, but we use it as a form of co-assessment to talk through where they are and how to get where they want to be. Nine times out of 10, they take the feedback and actually apply it. They know I’m not there to judge them. I’m there to help them get better.”
With my instructional coaching background, I always start with, ‘Hey, here are some great things I saw you doing. Here are some areas of growth. How can we work on this?’ Then I create the space for them to develop those ideas, providing support and resources as needed.
Mentoring to center students and build reflective practice
One of the hallmarks of NTC’s mentoring model is its emphasis on knowing students, guiding and encouraging teachers to learn who their students are in order to design better instruction. Another emphasis is on developing a habit or mindset of reflection, not just moving on, but circling back and asking what worked well in a lesson, what didn’t, and building that practice as part of a teacher’s instructional toolset.
Brooke said the focus on knowing students was particularly important in her former elementary school, which served 300 students, a third of whom were multilingual learners. “For the most part, my teachers didn’t speak their home languages. So that knowing students piece was huge. Building an academic learner profile is like an iceberg. There is the little bit we see, but a lot we have to work harder, dive deeper, to understand. For our multilingual learner teachers, understanding this holistic view of students not only improves lesson planning but deepens trust and relationships — it’s ground zero for establishing the conditions every student needs to engage in rigorous instruction.”
This knowledge of students also supports teachers to more effectively reflect on their practice in alignment with their students’ needs. They can dig into what happened during a lesson and look for instructional impact or alternative strategies to try. Or, as one of Brooke’s new teachers put it: “I know what to ask myself questions about.”
No one develops these practices overnight, Brooke shared. “A mentor is a powerful partner in supporting teachers to cultivate the habits of mind to return to these processes to design and improve instruction until it becomes second nature to their teaching practice.”
Mentoring to support a strong instructional culture
Brooke was adamant that each new teacher deserves a formalized induction process, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to participate in Minnesota’s pilot induction and mentoring program, which provided NTC training for mentors in her building. She said that it was critical that mentors and other staff supporting new teachers have a shared language and approach. She also observed that mentors were eager to learn and practice with their colleagues. “We’re all mentoring each other, building solutions together, learning how to be reflective practitioners, how to use data and professional knowledge to continuously develop our instructional practices to meet the needs of our kids.”
She continued: “Teacher induction should be so much more than a couple days of orientation. It should be an embedded, multi-year plan integrated with all teacher development initiatives and professional learning. Induction is the first several steps of a lifelong process for professional teachers, and it all starts with good mentoring that has a ripple effect over the course of their careers and across the school.”
