Hello Colleagues,



I’d like to share a mentoring story with you. I started working at One WITH
One in 1997 and although I had teaching experience, I was unfamiliar with
the principles and methods of Loving Teaching that Margaret (Peg) Van Duyne
created for the program. I was accustomed to focusing on what I was teaching
- a transmission of information – and I was often overwhelmed and
intimidated by some of the challenges our learners faced.



Through Peg’s and the other staff members’ mentoring, I was able to let go
of the fears I had about the participants succeeding or not and my fears
about their various difficulties. Instead I learned to see and value each
person as whole and unique, and to approach difficulties with compassion and
an open mind – a “beginner’s mind.” Instead of jumping in to fix a problem
and do something *for* a participant, I began to listen deeply, talk less,
and problem-solve *with* the person, with faith that no matter how bumpy the
road may be, she’d reach her goal.



What was it about Peg’s mentoring of me that made a difference? First, she
treated *me* as whole and unique, and valued my skills, experience, and
perspectives. She was always available for me to talk to, to ask questions,
to learn from her. Most evenings after work, she took a longer route home so
that she could drop me off and we’d talk during the drive. Peg was open to
me trying things out and doing things my own way, even if her experience
told her that it might not produce the result I intended. She knew that I’d
learn valuable lessons both when I succeeded and when things didn’t go as
I’d expected. Peg often said to us, “You can’t fail here,” meaning that no
matter what happened, we would learn, and then we’d figure out what to do
next – together.



Peg has an unwavering commitment to our participants’ success and to
creating opportunities for understanding and peace between people. She has
faith in each of us as individuals and as a team. I saw that faith
tranformed daily into action and results. Peg taught us how to speak and
listen with the head and the heart, using speech acts (Fernando Flores) to
communicate clearly. She also taught us a powerful method for clearing our
disappointments and judgments – of ourselves and others – to clarify our
intentions, to renew our spirit of engagement, and to make way for new
possibilities.



Peg and my mentoring relationship has not been one-directional; that is,
over the years, I’ve also had opportunities to mentor Peg, in particular
about writing about our work. She has been open to my perspective and
encouragement of her and in sharing what’s worked so well for us, our
participants, and our program.



So, you see, mentoring isn’t so much about what you do, but about who you
are and the relationship you create with another person. It’s about the flow
of love (high regard for a person and passion for what you are doing),
esteem, and faith, that you channel together into step by step action.



While I talk about my mentor and our co-mentoring, I also would like to
place my assessment within a framework.  What are the best practices to
which a staff member can aspire?  Peg prepared a document to challenge our
thinking, reflections and designing our actions.  Here's a portion of that
for others to use.

*One WITH One, INC.*

PRINCIPLES FOR STAFF RELATIONSHIPS

At One WITH One, we bring our mutual aims together -- including personal and
career goals --  to create a vision and plan for realizing the
organization’s effectiveness and leadership in the city, state and country.
For each of us, the organization’s objectives must enhance our personal
goals, and our personal goals must add to the strength and vitality of One
WITH One.  From this process, we identify our annual objectives and choose
our commitments.

We commit to partnership as an everyday opportunity.  Our primary
responsibility is to discover and expand possibilities for partnership among
culturally diverse people, to embody practices of partnership in all of our
professional work, and to embrace partnership as a time and place for
learning.  How do we do this?  The following list describes our principles
and practices of partnership:

1.  *Service*:  We commit to being “of service” to each other, to our
learners, our tutors, our funders and all other constituents of One WITH
One.  This means that we are willing to do any job (from sweeping floors to
meeting with bank presidents) in order to support the work of the team or of
any team member, and that we offer our help to our teammates in order to
ensure the fulfillment of our commitments as a team.  When we speak to our
team members or to anyone else, we *intend *to be of service:  to give or
increase support, understanding and appreciation.

2.  *Choice:  *We actively choose the commitments we intend to carry out.
We recognize that we must engage in some tasks which we like less than
others, in order to have the opportunity to do the work which is most
meaningful to us.  We choose *all *of our commitments, including our
commitment to be at One WITH One.

 3.  *Trust*:  We build trust with each other by:

*Only making promises which we can fulfill*.  We do not take on commitments
which we will be unable to keep because of other, prior commitments.  We *do
* rearrange our schedules and renegotiate prior commitments in order to each
contribute in equal measure to the work of the team.  We also challenge
ourselves, within realistic limits, to expand our own perceptions of what we
can produce.

*Keeping our promises so our words match our actions*.  We follow through
with our commitments.

*Renegotiating promises as soon as we realize we will be unable to keep them
*.  We take immediate action when we realize that we can’t keep a promise,
rather than “stringing” our teammates along on the expectation that we will
produce.  We make requests for assistance when we need it, or we make new,
more realistic offers of what we can do within a particular time frame.

 4.  *Responsibility/Accountability:  *Once we choose and accept
assignments, we assume personal responsibility for producing results.  We
are responsible for our own work *as well as for the work of the whole.  *We
do not say, “That’s not my job.”  Instead, we make it our responsibility to
know about our teammates’ work and to help when needed to ensure the success
of the team.  We are also responsible for continually correcting and
improving our competence.  We are responsible for our actions with each
trainee and with one another.

 5.  *Straight Communications*:  We recognize our teammates’ accomplishments
by acknowledging them directly and by telling others.  We commit to
harboring no hidden complaints about others.  When we have a concern, we
speak with the person directly and voice our concern by giving concrete
examples of the ways in which the person’s comments or actions have harmed
us or are not beneficial for the team.  We always speak with a person with
the intention that we will problem-solve together and repair our
relationship.  We do not complain for the sake of complaining, but for the
sake of improving our relationships and team work.

 6.  *Learning*: We declare ourselves as learners.  This means that we can
continue to learn and improve in our areas of expertise -- which we share
with the team for the sake of accomplishing our common goals -- *and *we can
gain competence in other areas.  Every person can teach us something.
Because learning can be uncomfortable, we agree that when we notice a team
member closing herself off from the possibility of learning, we will remind
her of her commitment to opening herself to new understanding, action and
competence.  We ask ourselves for reflective thinking in our actions with
trainees, colleagues, and all with whom we work and contact.

We declare ourselves to be a learning team.  We openly assess our actions
for the sake of supportive listening to discover if we may be blind to
something in our teaching, our teacher-student relationships, or our
intercultural communication.  We listen to the perspectives and experiences
of others to discover what we haven’t seen, heard or thought of before.
Other perspectives enrich our thinking and acting.

 7.  *Excellence*:  We commit to creating services and products with no
mistakes, that reflect our dedication to being responsible for both the
whole and for every detail.  We forgive each other when we make a mistake so
we can respect our efforts to be producing excellent work.  We forgive
ourselves when we make errors in order to free ourselves from self-criticism
and self-pity.  We commit to renew our efforts in producing excellent work.


 8.  *Innovation*:  Together, we commit to new ways of creating harmonious
team work and of fulfilling our mission.  We accept that opening to new team
members enables us to grow and learn.



Regards,

Anita H. Webb, MEd
One WITH One
www.onewithone.org


On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Margaret English <elitercy at rcn.com> wrote:


>   So much interesting stuff to read.

> I was lucky enough to be mentored when I was first became a program

> coordinator the Dept. of Ed. actually paid someone who was more experienced

> to walk me through the requirements (and there were many) she also

> informally gave me inside info when I felt like I had landed on the moon.

> I have informally mentored teachers in our program. Two have gone on for

> their masters in TESL and one of those now has his PHD from Univ. of New

> Mexico.  We would talk about theory, methods, goals, and anything else that

> came up. THey became as enthused about teaching as I am.  For me it's a

> calling I believe and I think they both felt that.

> I have been informally mentored as well by professors in college who saw

> what potential I had before I was even aware of it. I had one professor

> approach me in the elevator she asked me if I had thought about tutoring. I

> replied "Oh, you think I need a tutor?" she laughed and said "No, I think

> you could be a tutor." and so my journey began.

> Mentoring students is also something I do.  Two students who "practice

> taught" classes last year are now officially teaching in our program. They

> have come full circle.  Our staff reflects our student body and we are very

> happy about that.  These two teachers still meet with me and with another

> teacher to ask questions and run lesson plans by us.

> I guess I never thought of all of this as mentoring but reading everything

> people wrote I realize it is.

> MEG

>

>

> *"Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass...*

> *It's about learning to dance in the rain."*

> ~Vivian Greene

>

>

>  ------------------------------

>  *From:* specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:

> specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] *On Behalf Of *Katherine Mercurio

> Gotthardt

> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:56 AM

> *To:* specialtopics at nifl.gov

> *Subject:* [SpecialTopics 1431] Re: No mentoring in Adult Literacy?

>

>   Thank you, Paul, for clarifying what we all mean when we discuss

> mentoring!

>

> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:52 AM, <JURMO at ucc.edu> wrote:

>

>>  Hi, Colleagues,

>>

>>

>>

>> I’ve been very lucky to have had many, many great mentors in my adult

>> education career.   In some cases they were supervisors. In others they were

>> peers (including adult learners) with whom I worked on projects.

>>

>>

>>

>> They provided a mix of guidance (feedback, suggestions, ideas), material

>> support (they might have been my employer or someone who helped me get

>> funding for a project), encouragement (especially when we ran into

>> resistance or a lack of resources), and a sounding board (during

>> brainstorming and gripe sessions).

>>

>>

>>

>> I won’t list them all here right now, but I want to thank all those great

>> mentors.

>>

>>

>>

>> Paul Jurmo

>>

>>

>>

>> *From:* specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:

>> specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] *On Behalf Of *Katherine Mercurio

>> Gotthardt

>> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:41 AM

>> *To:* specialtopics at nifl.gov

>> *Subject:* [SpecialTopics 1424] Re: No mentoring in Adult Literacy?

>>

>>

>>

>> What would formal mentoring "look like"?  Obviously, I have never had a

>> formal mentor : )

>>

>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Rosemary Dill <rhdill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>>

>> In my years of Adult ESL ( more than 20) I have never been formally

>> mentored. In a  couple of settings, I was informally mentored which was very

>> very helpful to me.

>>

>> I would like to see more formal mentoring in the Adult Education

>> community.New teachers usually have lots of questions, both educational and

>> procedural, and they often are not sure where to turn for help.

>>

>>

>>

>> Rosemary Dill

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> *Mon, 9/28/09, David J. Rosen <djrosen123 at gmail.com>* wrote:

>>

>>

>> From: David J. Rosen <djrosen123 at gmail.com>

>>

>>

>> Subject: [SpecialTopics 1413] No mentoring in Adult Literacy?

>>

>> To: specialtopics at nifl.gov

>> Date: Monday, September 28, 2009, 8:08 PM

>>

>>

>>

>> Colleagues,

>>

>>

>>

>> I am disappointed at the poor response to these two questions about

>> mentoring. Perhaps you have meant to reply but have put it off. Don't delay

>> much longer. This discussion ends tomorrow, Tuesday, September 29th.

>>

>>    - * **Have you been formally or informally mentored by an experienced

>>    adult education leader? If so, was that a positive experience? If so, what

>>    made it especially beneficial?*

>>

>>

>>    - *Have you mentored a potential adult literacy education leader? If

>>    so, was that a positive experience? If so, what do you think was especially

>>    effective?*

>>

>>  Maybe not many people in our field have mentored someone, or have been

>> mentored. If so, we may have a serious leadership problem. Leadership

>> requires good models, of course, but would-be leaders also need help,

>> support, encouragement, people who believe in them, people who will take the

>> time to show them how to be effective.

>>

>>

>>

>> I have been mentored and I have mentored. My mentors did not necessarily

>> think of themselves as my "mentor", and I am sure the people I have mentored

>> have thought of me more as just someone who cared enough about them to

>> answer their questions, take them seriously, suggest some other ways of

>> solving problems, and most important, someone who believed they had the

>> makings of good leadership and wanted to see them succeed.

>>

>>

>>

>> I am less interested in whether we have formal mentorships with that name,

>> although these might be useful. I am interested to know whether mentoring is

>> taking place, if people new to our field are getting the support they need

>> to be education leaders.

>>

>>

>>

>> Now is the time to speak up, please. What and how is our field doing with

>> mentoring? Even if all you have to say about this is "I never thought about

>> this before. I have never seen mentoring in this field. What is it?" now

>> would be a good time to say that.

>>

>>

>>

>> Of course, if you have mentored or been mentored, tell us about that, too.

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> David J. Rosen

>>

>> Special Topics Discussion Moderator

>>

>> djrosen at theworld.com<http://us.mc576.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=djrosen@theworld.com>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

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>>

>>

>>

>>

>> --

>> Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt

>> Community Writer for NEWS AND MESSENGER

>> www.insidenova.com

>>

>> -------------------------------

>> National Institute for Literacy

>> Special Topics mailing list

>> SpecialTopics at nifl.gov

>> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to

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>>

>

>

>

> --

> Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt

> Community Writer for NEWS AND MESSENGER

> www.insidenova.com

>

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> National Institute for Literacy

> Special Topics mailing list

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>




-- 
Anita H. Webb, MEd
One WITH One
www.onewithone.org
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