Rachel Baker wasn’t always going to be a teacher. At one point, she was on her way to pharmacy school, but life got in the way. Fast forward 16 years, and she’s now a mentor teacher specialist in Calvert County Public Schools.
Rachel became a mentor through a Maryland Leads-funded project to establish a formal induction program in her district, which, like many small and rural school systems, is challenged to recruit and retain new teachers. New Teacher Center provided intensive professional learning and in-field coaching for three new district full-release mentor positions. Working closely with Rachel and TJ Hill, supervisor of instructional technology and teacher induction, NTC supported training and forums with additional staff to build a mentoring mindset across other instructional roles and initiatives in the district. Calvert County was a featured partner in our spring 2024 webinar on teacher retention in smaller districts.
Earlier this year, Rachel shared insights from her mentoring journey.
Tell us how you came to be a teacher and a mentor.
I didn’t actually go to school to be a teacher. I have a degree in chemistry, and I thought that I was going to be a pharmacist, … but I needed to take a year off so I decided I’d try being a substitute teacher. I went to the training, and two weeks later got the call that a chemistry teacher had just quit unexpectedly, and they needed a long-term sub. After I was there for a few months, they offered me the full-time position, and I haven’t looked back since. I think part of the reason why I was successful was because I was assigned a mentor who was amazing. I still send her Christmas cards; we email back and forth. I really cannot imagine what I would’ve done without her. I probably wouldn’t have stayed.
I taught high school chemistry and physical chemistry at the middle school level. Then I got my master’s in educational leadership, and when I moved to Calvert County Public Schools, I became a dean of students at a middle school, and a few years later, a high school assistant principal. The reason I wanted to go into administration was to be an instructional leader, but sometimes that’s really difficult when you’re dealing with the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities of an administrator. I feel like this job allows me to actually tap into what I genuinely care about. I also truly understand the impact a mentor can have on the success of a teacher. So here we are.
As a mentor, what have you learned is important about working with new teachers?
Validating their commitment and experience to give them space to grow. I think it’s important to acknowledge and recognize what they are doing is a hard job. I think it is also important to help them understand there is no expectation that they are going to know everything or be perfect and that we are there to provide support in order for them to grow their practice. They might need help understanding that you can have a very wonderful lesson plan, but when it comes down to actually implementing it, sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. That’s okay. You just go back and reflect and make some modifications. Every day is going to be different; every period is going to be different. We’re humans, and we’re interacting with humans, so you can only predict so many things.
Recognizing their knowledge and expertise is important too. Even if they don’t have advanced expertise in terms of instruction, they do have expertise about themselves, and they have expertise about the students they are teaching. As a mentor, I’m not with those students, so I don’t know them. So it’s crucial to have conversations with teachers and ask for their input instead of telling them what to do. A mentoring conversation is about truly including them in a dialogue so that it’s a partnership, a collaboration.
What are some common challenges new teachers have creating optimal learning environments for students?
When we ask teachers to pick their focus area for a mentoring session or a lesson, for many, it starts with a need to improve classroom management. I would say on the new teacher’s part, there is a huge concern around managing classroom behaviors because when their classroom isn’t functioning the way it should, it’s impacting the learning. Usually, it’s either a lack of knowledge or maybe inconsistency with creating routines and procedures, or with communicating consistently and then following through.
Recognizing and supporting students’ needs is a big part of it. My role is trying to reframe questions so teachers reflect on what assumptions they are making about a student (or students) and what they actually know about them. I have had many conversations with teachers to address how they see specific students, or even a class, in a negative light rather than their behaviors. I truly believe that every student, every person, wants to do well. And if they are not doing well, it is because there is something getting in their way, and their behavior is communicating that.
So, many of the optimal learning environment conversations I have with teachers are focused on making it safe to have those conversations with kids and encouraging them to reflect on the kind of opportunities for learning they are providing. Do their learners feel connected? Are they interested? Do they find the instruction relevant to their lives and who they are?
What are some features of high-quality mentoring?
It’s important in the beginning to definitely spend a lot of time building trusting relationships and trying to remove any barriers or biases … finding that grace and understanding throughout our interactions. Then, if we focus on coaching language and stances, it helps us approach conversations with teachers with the right entry points depending on where the person is. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of knowing teachers and then helping teachers know the students in their classrooms so they are actually planning instruction for those specific students and not just a generalized plan.
What do you cherish about being a mentor?
I just had a session last week with someone, and he made a comment that was pretty interesting. He said: “Wow. This lesson is so much better now that I have talked it through with you. Even though this is something extra that I have to do, it is a burden that I am happy to carry.” It happens all the time. A new teacher says they can see the benefit of having conversations about how things can be modified or improved to truly meet student needs. It is so worthwhile seeing their confidence increase throughout the year.
What are some concerns you have that might require a reset from existing mindsets about induction and new teacher support?
When we did a needs assessment at the beginning of last school year, we saw a real disconnect in perceptions about student-centered support. Something like 70+% of school leaders said they were providing support to help teachers be student-centered, but only 20% of teachers said they’re receiving that kind of feedback. A majority of school leaders also said they lacked training in ways to support new teachers. As someone who has been an administrator, I know that’s true. The training I received about observing and evaluating teachers was literally a one-hour session watching a mock lesson. We didn’t role-play post-observation conversations with the teacher, or even have boxes on the template for notes or feedback, no guidance on that at all. I truly see the value in having an opportunity to receive feedback and have a conversation about your practice, so we all need to be on the same page. We need to all have consistent language and understanding and also consistent expectations.
We also have a lot of teachers coming in on provisional licenses — definitely more than half the teachers I’m working with this year are — who don’t have a background in education. I was one of those teachers myself. We have teachers coming to teach in our Career and Technology Academy with 20+ years of industry expertise in their field, also with no instructional background. It’s challenging because there are so many foundational things that we need to work on before working through a coaching cycle.
It’s especially hard in career and technical content areas that don’t have state standards. A lot of these new teachers are writing the curriculum themselves — a first-year teacher having to write their own curriculum and create their own lessons. When you have no background in education, that’s overwhelming and stressful. We have to do everything we can to meet them where they are and allow them to gain confidence so they can be successful and stay in the profession.
