Reflecting on the Last 4 Months at The Mentoree has been compelling. From the beginning, our goal was to provide teachers with the opportunity to self direct their mentorship experiences by being able to find, reach out and get OEMConnected to a Mentor registered as part of OnEdMentors Connect (OEMConnect). As I have written previously, this was a vision that started because of a question raised by Stephen Hurley and Derek. Stephen is the founder and chief catalyst at VoicEd Radio, and Derek invited me onto the panel when it first began in February 2017. Derek, who was the host at the time, started OnEdMentors with Chris Cluff as a weekly live panel podcast about education intending to support preservice teachers. Over time, the show evolved and, when Derek handed it over to me as host and producer last January, I was excited to have the chance to further evolve the show. Now, OnEdMentors is a weekly live show where different panels of educators are gathered around a topic with the goal of mentoring the audience and learning from each other. It is in line with our overarching principle of cultivating relationships to build capacity for educators.
On the final episode before the summer break, I gathered a panel of some of the OEMConnect Mentors who had helped grow The Mentoree in a new direction. That evening’s panel consisted of Dr. Teri Rubinoff and Christine Chin, OEMConnect Mentors and a part of our Leadership Team as well as Jordan Rappaport, Melanie White, and Rashmee Karnad-Jani. This episode featured these OnEdMentors Connect (OEMConnect) Mentors who shared what they have brought to and taken away from the work at The Mentoree this year. This includes Conversations to Build Capacity, our Core Values Workshop and why mentorship matters for professional learning, teacher well being and efficacy.
The Mentoree is the name that combines the word mentor and mentee with the intonation of the word community. Since mentoree is also a term used to describe one who is being mentored, it fits so well for our learning community. When Leigh Cassell of Digital Human Library (dHL) and I first started OnEdMentors Connect, we were extending the mentorship experience from the original show with the goal of supporting educators at any stage of their careers by inviting Mentors to register and Mentees who join the community to reach out to and connect with them for a self-directed 1:1 experience. Through a phased approach that began as a collaborative inquiry, we grew the community and learned so much through feedback. One of the key outcomes was just how much Mentors and Mentees were learning from each other. That’s when I evolved the our tag line: We all have something to teach, and we all have something to learn. That was a driving force beyond creating Conversations to Build Capacity.
When remote learning hit, our Leadership Team agreed that we needed to help teachers tool up, so we reached out to Mentors in our community, and many offered to be part of our first series of Conversations to Build Capacity. Each offering helped in a different aspect of teaching for remote learning. It was amazing to see how quickly the session filled, but what was also amazing was differentiating the two types of offerings. Under Conversations to Build Capacity, we were developing two forms of learning experiences. One we call Responsive Presentations because they are planned with slides by the presenter, but they can go in any direction the participants need, making them more of an exchange than an imparting of knowledge or teaching of skill. Circle Conversations are distinct because participants gather around a predetermined topic with no agenda or preconceived plan. The facilitator shares the norms of collaboration and then leads the group of no more than 10 participants through the thinking and reflection stages to unpack a topic and build the conversation around what people bring to it with the hope that everyone can take something away with them. It was such a success that we had an additional day of Conversations to Build Capacity and then offered two Anti-Racist Education sessions facilitated by Rashmee Karnad-Jani in response to the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests against anti-black racism. Two of our OEMConnect Mentors wanted to share some of their thinking around this.
Post by Melanie White:
Our positions in physical space, the way that we set up a room, a house, or a classroom, unconsciously communicate messages. The desk at the front of the room may indicate power, but in virtual spaces, we face a different dynamic in a world without furniture. Relationships develop differently online and I am still learning how to use a digital space with my students. I know this virtual world holds potential power, but in a different way than the physical world. It holds the potential for sharing and moving beliefs, for activating learning, for motivating communities, and for transforming society. I experienced some of this online potential through mentoring and Conversations to Build Capacity this year.
There was no desk at the front of the room, no principal or CEO. There was only an invitation, the ever present welcome into the digital space, to the opportunities of connection and conversation through the efforts of The Mentoree. While mentoring was a protracted lesson through infrequent exchanges, Conversations to Build Capacity was a deep dive into a shared space. In the midst of a global pandemic, the death of George Floyd and the many other acts of antiBlack racism, Rashmee Karnad-Jani moderated our conversations using the imagery of “pulling up a chair at the table”. This circle of conversation was led with humility as she generously listened to the Whiteness coming to antiracism. I felt welcomed, accepted, and even in the discomfort, I felt I could be vulnerable in my feeble steps towards equity and the undoing of White supremacy. Using a Jamboard to record our thoughts, we thought, wrote, and then discussed. Although that virtual moment is complete, the Jamboard notes hover in my Google Drive near the “recently viewed” as a reminder of the work ahead.
Rashmee’s Karnad-Jani’s thoughts:
My engagement with the work done at The Mentoree came out of my connection with a former colleague who is currently part of the leadership team. I was interested in what I would learn and what I could contribute. The opportunity to do both came earlier than I had expected and as a result of my question “What are we doing to build capacity at this time?” in response to the murder of George Floyd and anti-Black racism that had once again, become news, although as those who experience it daily will assert, it never really goes away.
Organizations around North America including those in Ontario and the GTA had begun to issue solidarity statements and I was curious to know what that meant. Solidarity in itself is an empty word unless people do something in our everyday work to shift thinking especially those of us who are relative onlookers in racist oppressions. So I reached out to the Mentoree and asked what their plan was as an Ontario educators’ network. I was surprised to be asked if I had a thought or idea and if so, would I consider facilitating a Conversation to Build Capacity.
I recognize my social location as a racialized person known as “South Asian” in the Western world. I was therefore very clear that I would not present content on Anti Black Racism as that is not my lived experience. Nor was I going to invite my friends or colleagues who were experiencing unimaginable trauma once again, to come forward and speak. I proposed a conversation where participants would be invited to look inward and engage in a self-assessment of their learning around Anti-Black Racism with my role being that of a listener. I was delighted that this idea was welcomed by the Mentoree leadership team. The digital platform for the conversation was thoughtfully and collaborative set up for me to open up the space.
My goal was not to engage in performative allyship but to listen without judgement, especially if the responses were different from my anti-racist praxis. The two Conversations that I facilitated around anti-racism began with my clear understanding that I was listening, and not nudging with a yes-but stance. What I took away from this interaction was that the “pull up a chair” metaphor that had worked well with me from The Mentoree was also appreciated by attendees who engaged deeply in the conversation, and with one another, because they felt safe to share and ask questions.
Participants trusted me with their thoughts and made themselves vulnerable that day. The self directed learning does not stop here. I understand there are requests for this thread of anti-racist education to continue, which is heartening. When a facilitator does not insist that people move to Step 2, when there is no finger wagging, participants are more willing to look inwards, and seek learning. There is a lot of solid content and many book lists available for those who seek them. For the reading and self-study in anti-racist education to move from an intellectual understanding and become an integral part of educators’ praxis can only come when such conversations continue.
The Mentoree answered my question of “what are you going to do” by inviting me to take a chair at the table. There are honest voices within the mentors’ group who speak of silences in their educational journey. I hear the Critical Race Theory being discussed as an intentional way of ordering society - that systemic racism doesn’t just happen quite by chance. I am excited to learn from these mentors also. I am excited about how being an un-expert with colleagues committed to anti-racist education allows for social change through everyday inward-looking as a professional practice. Perhaps, I have started to “find my people”
Listening to everyone’s insight’s during last week’s OnEdMentors as well as the posts from these Mentors, there is so much important feedback for and positive reinforcement of our direction. Further, ten of us participated in a Core Values Workshop with Zoe Share from Schmooz Media, and it was truly incredible to see what came out of it. After independently adding answers to specific questions, it turns out that we are already so aligned in what we believe The Mentoree is about and it's reassuring to know how many shared values we have. We will be following up with Zoe to incorporate this learning into our strategic plan and visioning for The Mentoree. We were lucky to have the support of dHL and Leigh to begin our journey and help operationalize our ideas. As we build new digital infrastructure and refine our work, we will be adding offerings under The Mentoree umbrella that we will be sure to consistently coordinate with our collective vision of a responsive, non-hierarchical space where teachers can come for professional learning that supports their well being and helps build their sense of efficacy. This is a place for all of us- at any stage of our careers, because we are learners. We are excited about the work ahead as we go under creative construction for the summer, and we look forward to sharing our next steps in the Fall.
