It is great to see you are preparing inquiry-based STEM teachers for jobs in schools that need it the most. Have you been able to collect data on the impact these new teachers are causing in their respective schools (i.e. graduation and retention rates, students' grades and feedback)? It may still be too early for data collection.

Also, what materials and/or mentoring curriculum do you use to facilitate inquiry-based teacher training?

Thanks for your time, and well done.

Hello Josias, what a great question! We don't as of yet...would this be of interest to you? 

We don't have a mentoring curriculum per se. We do encourage near peers to cross content areas, and we ask them to reflect with a tool we've developed called "focal students." These are students in each teacher's class who the teacher may have struggled to engage in STEM subjects for any number of reasons. Our goal is to draw those particular students' needs into the teacher's focus so they can build in appropriate differentiation moving forward.

We would genuinely love to be in touch. Feel free to email me at jjohn428@msudenver.edu.

Thanks and great luck with your studies!

Welcome to our video and thanks for visiting! We would love to hear about any of your mentoring efforts, and what you have found to be most effective. We have realized that our Scholars and Teachers themselves are by far our best resource, and so we tried to build a structure to support community building among the group. 

Thank you for stopping by our video. The near-peer mentoring has truly helped with retention and we would be interested to hear how others have implemented mentoring within their program

Hello Near Peer Mentoring Team,

The concept of "Near-Peer" mentoring is intriguing! I am curious how this is different than say a methods "practicum? Additionally, I am trying to determine where the  "mentoring" program comes in? 

I see lots of potentials for such a model in building a cohort of new teachers.

Best,

Anne

Hi Anne, I love that you are asking about that. So the students' practicum experiences are field placements with experienced mentor teachers. While there is certainly great value in that, we find that our preservice teachers tend to struggle with their own self-efficacy and that they can sometimes feel alone in that struggle. By intentionally supporting connections between novice teachers who are at similar places in their trajectories, it allows them to feel less isolated. They can share strategies, struggles, worries, fears, etc. It helps both near peers feel that they are part of a larger community and that they have support, and we see those aspects as serving the mentoring function. 

Love the question, and we are happy to keep chatting!

This is a great project. I really like your model of having different disciplines observe a class session. I think this would be really helpful for our program. Our project, QB@CC, works to have math and biology faculty work to create a ready-to-use modules in either discipline that teaches both types of content. We've found that addressing the math and biology discipline differences (language, equations, examples, how graphs are described) is extremely important to create a cohesive module. We have mainly relied on bridging this gap by having our faculty work via zoom in small groups of math and biology faculty when creating modules. I think observing how the same module is used in different class types by different faculty would be extremely helpful. 

Hi Joseph, it sounds like you all are doing some exciting work! We are definitely still wrestling with how to best support cross-disciplinary connections since our structures for teacher licensure and instruction are so siloed. We have begun exploring lesson study as a means of digging into spaces where cross-disciplinary teaching and learning is happening. Certainly happy to talk more about this

Nice presentation! Near-peer mentoring is very impactful for Scholars - we have the same in our Noyce program at my university. In our program the Near peer mentors are also graduates of our program so they know the teacher preparation program our Scholars are engaged in. Do you do the same in your program or are the Near peer mentors from different teacher prep programs? Also we have group mentor sessions (via Teams or Zoom these days) where we all meet together and discuss various teaching topics as a group. Have you collected any formal feedback yet on the impact of your Near peer mentor program? How many observations/visits do Scholars conduct with their Near peer mentors per semester? Do the Scholars teach or just observe and consult with their Near peer mentor? What kinds of topics do you find your Scholars learn most about from the experience (e.g., we find they pick up a lot of administrative-type skills and classroom management).

You mention the impact this program has on retention; do you have research/data on this?  This seems like a great program; I think the pre-service teachers can relate more to novice teachers and see themselves as successful when observing.  Do they have any other interactions outside of the classroom?  I wonder if some informal more social gatherings could help further that relationship and create more of a support system. 

Any collaboration that provides high quality training for preservice teachers and retains new inservice teachers is a great project.  I am interested in how the three have worked together and has it had an impact on the master teacher's teaching? 

Our pre-service teachers, as well as STEM majors in general, had very positive survey feedback on their experience with near-peer mentors. Mentees found them relatable, and valued their guidance.  What kind of feedback did you get from your pre-service teachers?