Roles and Responsibilities

Okay, so I tried to comment on Betsy's post, but Blogger wouldn't allow me to do it. Instead, I am creating a new post in response to her post about the roles and responsibilities of mentors! Maybe I need a mentor for blogging! Anyway, my mentor/mentee situation is a little non-traditional, as I am mentoring my inclusion teacher. She is in the room with me all day every day. Although she is new to the county, she is not new to teaching, so her questions and concerns seem to be more process-oriented. We do spend a lot of time talking about how to best meet the needs of our students with special needs, and we focus on how to make necessary accomodations to help them to be successful fourth graders. But as a "mentor", I am not really sure how I am doing in that role since I view us as equal partners in the classroom. It was important to me that she felt a sense of ownership of the class, so I don't feel that I am necessarily fuflilling the role of a "mentor" with her. Sure, we talk about the ins and outs of "The River Road Way" because every school has its own way of doing things, and I check in to make sure that deadlines are met, but overall, we work as a team. Maybe that's what mentoring is for us--we are a team, and we help each other when help is needed, we remind each other when reminding is needed, but mostly we are just in this together.