Teachers Mentoring Teachers: Practices for Powerful Professional Communities

In this course, you’ll join Harvard faculty and experienced mentors who work directly with beginning and veteran teachers to hone their teaching and instructional leadership practice. You’ll contribute your own expertise and learn from that of your fellow practitioners as you address the following questions:

• How are mentoring relationships unique when compared to other professional relationships (i.e. coaching, administrative, collegial)?
• How do we share our classrooms and teach alongside pre-service and novice teachers to support them as they begin their careers?
• What does it take to mentor early career teachers for sustainability, longevity, retention, and fuller participation as they establish themselves in our professional community of practice?
• What are the mentoring practices that sustain teachers’ growth and well-being at each stage of their career?

The course is divided into six one-week modules designed for you to grow as a mentor teacher. Each week consists of approximately three hours of online work and one practice challenge, during which you’ll apply your learning in your real-world context. 

Through the weekly modules you’ll uncover the general characteristics of powerful mentoring relationships, the unique features of mentoring relationships at different stages of teaching, and your own authentic enactments of who you are and aspire to be as a mentor. Whether you are new to mentoring or an experienced mentor, you’ll learn practices that help you build your mentoring skills and seek out opportunities to be mentored by others.

• Week 1: Identifying your Mentor Self
• Week 2: Building Mentoring Relationships
• Week 3: Mentoring through Personal Challenge
• Week 4: Mentoring Student and Apprentice Teachers
• Week 5: Mentoring Early Career Teachers
• Week 6: Mentoring Up the Teacher Career Ladder

• Connect your personal history to elements of powerful mentoring.
• Develop and practice skills used to build trust in mentoring relationships.
• Use cycles of inquiry to dig into personal and social challenges.
• Identify roles and relationships that support the development of student and apprentice teachers.
• Establish strategies for co-teaching with student, apprentice, and novice teachers.
• Build practices for supporting early career teachers as they navigate challenges and participate more fully in the professional community. 
• Explore leadership and mentoring practices that serve and support mentors and mentees when the stakes are high.
• Examine methods for mentoring across a career in teaching, also drawing examples from other disciplines.

• Teacher leaders or teachers with an interest in leadership
• Education professionals who support teachers in their work, such as mentors, instructional coaches, grade-level or department leads, supervisors, or teachers in other leadership roles

This program welcomes registrations from both individuals and teams. First-time registrants need to create a Professional Education account to register.

Individuals: Click the "Register" button at the top of this page to log into your Professional Education account and access the registration page. Proceed with the individual form until submission. Invoices will be immediately available upon the submission of the form.

Teams:

Step 1: Designate one participant or an administrative staff member as the Coordinator.

• The Coordinator should click the "Register" button at the top of this page to log into their Professional Education account and access the registration page.
• Proceed with the team form, including providing the name, email address, and job title of each participant in your team.
• The Coordinator can choose to receive a team invoice
• The invoice will be immediately available upon the submission of the form. Contact us if you are eligible for the group discount. 
• Contact us if you need to make any changes to your team after submitting the form.

Step 2: Upon the submission of the team application, all team members will receive an email notification with a link to their personal registration form. Team members should complete their forms promptly to access the program’s Community Group for updates and Canvas course access. 

Professional Education is excited to offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for your successful participation in this program. The Continuing Education Unit (CEU) is a nationally and internationally recognized unit of measurement for non-credit continuing education programs. As an IACET Accredited Provider, Professional Education offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard.

Requirements to be eligible to earn CEUs:

• Attend or view all program sessions.
• Complete program evaluation.
• Successfully complete all program requirements.

Upon successfully meeting all requirements outlined above, you will be notified via email that you have A) earned the certificate of completion for the program and B) are now eligible to earn CEUs. This email will contain the link to complete the required reflection assignment if you wish to receive CEUs, along with a submission deadline and time frame for receiving your CEUs. After submitting your reflection assignment, we will notify you via email of your CEU status, and if you have met all requirements, you will be able to download and view your CEU certificate at this point in time. ILC modules are eligible for 2 CEUs.

Note: Professional Education is accredited by the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard. IACET is recognized internationally as a standard development organization and accrediting body that promotes the quality of continuing education and training.

Starting in 2024, ILC course tuition will be adjusted to $399 per person per course. However, if you have already taken at least one ILC course before or in 2023, you will continue enjoying the price of $349 per person per course for all iterations during 2024 through the use of a discount code. The code will be shared with all eligible participants via email. If you are eligible and don’t have it, please contact us so we can send it to you again. Click here for instructions on how to apply the code.