Writing Relationships

By Author: endeavor
Total Articles: 95
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Mentor, teacher, sounding board, role model, gadfly, coach, trouble shooter, cheerleader, ombudsman. As a university supervisor of preservice teachers, I work within and among these roles in complex relationships. Of my many tasks, one is to support and encourage new English teachers as they transfer the conceptual work of the university to the practical worlds of middle school and high school classrooms.

What are your writing stories and those of your students? How can these stories inform our work across grade levels— middle school, high school, college, and beyond?

Our supervisory meetings and writ-ten communication throughout the duration of their program form a nexus for coursework, observational experiences, inquiry projects, portfolio development, and teaching. Across Omega Replica Watches these roles and settings, we write together in relationships. As with all relationships, no two are the same and they are in a constant state of flux. Each preservice teacher has his or her own goals, challenges, strengths, and blind spots ...
... when beginning to learn the craft of teaching, and each preservice teacher is motivated by and responds differently to feedback. I try to be conscious of all of these roles, settings, and relationships when I write to, with, about, and for preservice teachers.

Over the course of their education program, most frequently we write email messages to each other: questions, feedback, updates, advice, and notes of encouragement. In our face-to-face supervisory meetings and electronic exchanges, we are laying foundations for relationships that will sustain formal evaluations and pointed advice. We are learning how to work together, and we are defining our boundaries for what aspects of ourselves are open and included in the work of developing teaching and mentoring personas. We are learning what motivates us and sustains our passion for helping, and being helped by, others. Along with this learning, we are constantly writing with each other. The preservice teachers keep a journal of their experiences with student teaching. In their journals they record observations and pose questions about their school settings and their emerging teaching practices/approaches. As a university supervisor who is a former high school teacher, I respond to their journal entries, commenting on observations, offering working suggestions to questions, and posing new directions that may or may not guide future observations. At the same time, I am learning from my preservice students' written observations, reflecting on how they make meaning and negotiate identities. Writing allows such observations to be made and shared. During student teaching, the journal exercises include the mentor teacher. All three of us—preservice teacher, mentor teacher, and university supervisor—write together about lessons taught and observed, school and curriculum issues, and challenges and victories with students. While our perspectives often differ, we work at sustaining relationships oriented around preservice teachers learning their craft and engaging in reflection through writing.

At various milestones of their program, I am writing about my preservice teachers. I complete formal observation forms and evaluations of Praxis domain artifacts. Preservice teachers and university professors read these documents, which are included in the preservice teachers' develop-mental portfolios. Hence, prospective employers might potentially read these documents. While I have an official responsibility to evaluate, make suggestions for improvement, and represent pre-service teachers' current state of development for the program, I also have Tag Heuer Replica Watches to remain faithful to the relationships I have established with them. My goal is for these evaluations to be fair and representative, but also to mediate future refinement of their teaching craft.

At the end of their program, I write for my preservice teachers by crafting letters of recommendation to prospective employers. In these letters, I represent who they are as teachers from what I have observed, documented, and witnessed from our relationship and our writing work together. I want them to become strong teachers who value their students and their students' writing experiences. Writing, then, serves many purposes in my work with preservice students and in my work as a teacher educator.