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the partnership (Bradbury, 2010; Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Unlike traditional mentors,
educative mentors value novices’ voices as much as their own expertise. Educative
mentors are focused on teachers’ growth as opposed to merely acclimating their new
colleague to the setting (Wexler, 2020), and educative mentoring relationships tend
to continue across time. The following mentoring vignette provides an example of
educative mentoring in action.

Dr. Amanda Steiner is Mentoring Vignette
Assistant Professor of Julie Bell: When my principal asked me to undergo mentor training, I took
Elementary Education the opportunity because I wanted to give back to new teachers in the same
at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha and way I was mentored. I received state-sponsored regional training focused
is a member of Omega on instructional improvement and managing difficult conversations with
Chapter of Nebraska State mentees, while my district’s newly-formed mentoring curriculum focused
Organization. alsteiner@ on acclimating mentees to our district and school—acting as a local guide.
unomaha.edu
Eventually, I found an opportunity to utilize my training through an
observation cycle. During a pre-observation conference, my mentee asked
me to observe her 9th grade remedial English class she was struggling to
reach. I believe she felt comfortable inviting me to this class because we
had developed a rapport. While I did not initially have an observation tool in
mind, I observed my mentee had difficulty engaging in proximity with her
students. This was not for lack of trying, but her classroom was arranged in
tight rows for other classes with more students.
In our post-observation conference, we brainstormed ways she might
move around the classroom more easily (e.g., teach the students to arrange
the desks in groups at the beginning of class and move them back at the end).
This experience prompted me to reflect on my own classroom and teaching.
Even though I taught from different areas of the classroom, I realized my
desks were almost always in rows, an issue I could also address.

Coaching
The term coaching is multifaceted, and if the role of the coach is not well defined,
coaches can find the duties of their job pervasive (Killion, 2009; Knight, 2007).
Coaches can engage in various roles and models of coaching; therefore, an essential
component of implementing coaching is having a clearly defined role and vision
for how coaching will be utilized. Instructional coaches provide onsite professional
development to teachers (i.e., work with teachers in classroom settings) with the goal
of improving their instructional practice. Instructional coaches build partnerships
with the teachers with whom they work to co-construct knowledge and foster
reflection. With similar goals, cognitive coaches engage in guided conversations
that are rooted in using inquiry and questioning to mediate the teachers’ thinking
and help them examine perceptions of their instruction (Costa & Garmston, 2002).
Another form of coaching, known as student-centered coaching, is rooted in using
student data to guide conversations that are focused on student-learning targets and
improvement of instruction (Sweeney, 2010).
All coaches dedicate their time working in the novice teacher’s classroom.
This creates a context for collaboration between the coach and teacher to co-plan
instruction, model instructional strategies, examine decisions, and use data to reflect
on teaching (Knight, 2007). Dialogue and reflection are at the heart of instructional

28 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators