Mentoring for Talent: A Practical Guide for Schools

Mentoring for Talent

A Practical Guide for Schools

Mark A. Smith

Published in 2024 by Amba Press, Melbourne, Australia

www.ambapress.com.au

© Mark A. Smith 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design: Tess McCabe

Internal design: Amba Press

Editor: Andrew Campbell

ISBN: 9781923116764 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781923116771 (ebk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Contents

About the author

Introduction

Chapter 1 Why mentoring?

Chapter 2 Mentoring or coaching?

Chapter 3 A process towards student agency

Chapter 4 Transference: the many facets of mentorship

Chapter 5 Competition mentoring

Chapter 6 Mentoring for academic success

Chapter 7 Authentic intentions and personal growth

Chapter 8 Stories of the gifted

Chapter 9 The practical applications and school-wide benefits of a high-ability mentor program

Conclusion

Afterword

References

Acknowledgements

About the author

Mark Smith is an innovative educator with over 30 years’ experience in the Victorian independent school system. He holds a Master of Education in gifted and talented education from Monash University, Melbourne, and has long been associated with the Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children (VAGTC), where he also served as president between 2018 and 2021.

His work in gifted and talented education has seen Mark create and implement multifaceted school-wide programs at some of Melbourne’s largest independent schools. An advocate for guided inquiry-based learning approaches, Mark has facilitated outstanding academic results for students of all ages, using mentoring to cultivate questioning skills and deep, engaging personal research processes, often leading to student agency and transformational learning.

The personalised nature of mentoring combines many of Mark’s passions in education, including relationship-building, fostering a sense of belonging, goal-setting, formative feedback, progress-checking, questioning, trouble-shooting and high-interest action research – all techniques that support the whole person in their development.

Mark is adamant about building the learning scaffold for all students and he uses mentoring as one means of achieving this. In his broader work, he has advocated for every student being presented with the opportunity to embrace their best learning at their developmental stage so that they can perform in all areas – academic, social/emotional and personal – in line with their abilities.

In addition to mentoring, Mark uses a range of real-life enrichment techniques in his teaching, including research and problem-solving. Depending on the learning context, he encourages his students to work individually, in small groups, and using collaborative approaches to engage, motivate and enable best outcomes. This creative, relevant and high-interest approach to teaching and learning incorporates significant differentiation at the highest level of student ability, promoting learning for life and inspiring students to perform at the peak of their achievement capabilities.

Ultimately Mark hopes that his students will be transformational in their learning, using their skills and abilities for the good of others and to make a positive difference in society. Again, mentoring provides a role-modelled process for this development and transformation.

Mark is married to Kristen, another passionate educator. He has two adult children, Jordan and Charlotte. He lives on a small acreage at Warrandyte in Melbourne. Mark has an appreciation of nature and the environment, and in his spare time enjoys coastal fishing and exploration, something he makes time for regularly along the vast Gippsland coast of Victoria.

Introduction

Growing up in a small country town in Gippsland in the late seventies, I attended a tiny country school with about 75 primary students. It is fair to say that my educational experience started very small. Differentiation was not a term I had ever heard of, and the only ability grouping I could ever remember was in spelling, where we had mauve-coloured books with levels from 1 to 30. Students started at Level 1 with the most basic of words, and in time, through a practice and testing process, they hoped that they might get to Level 30, where the words were much harder to spell.

I guess to some extent reading was also set by ability, starting with Dick and Dora, and Fluff and Nip, then moving to the Victorian Readers First Book to Sixth Book, then branching boldly into the Enid Blyton or Dr Seuss series. I was never much of a reader, so I did not care much for the books or the progression in which they were read. I recall taking a long time to even get through my very first reader, so my reading must have taken a long time to develop.

However, I do remember sport at school, and the relationships I had with my teachers. In fact, it was my relationships with my teachers and peers that enabled me to enjoy primary school so much. I lived for sport, and even in our tiny country school we still had inter-school sport. The boys played football (VFL) back then, and the girls played netball, and students worked hard from Year 3 to gain a place in the teams that competed against other schools each Friday afternoon. Our teachers were the coaches and umpires, and we had the best time playing and competing. We also participated in swimming and athletics, where we competed against six to eight other schools of similar size on big carnival days. Even back then, if we performed well, we could qualify for District, then Regionals, then State competition, if we continued to progress.

In the small town we would often see our teachers on the weekend playing footy or netball, at the local dance, or just passing by in the street. The teachers were part of our community and we adored them. I was not a quick learner at that time, but I did integrate well into school, and I was swept up in the very basic educational culture of my tiny school. I learned almost by osmosis rather than anything very strategic or specific. For me, it was the very act of joining in and having a go that enabled me to develop new skills. I was struck by the humour of the teachers and my peers and the bonds we formed. We kind of just learned together with very little stress or pressure. As I look back, it was actually very special.

It is interesting that I remembered these student/teacher relationships and this positive school culture from my primary experience when it came to my own teaching. When I was trying to solve a learning problem with my gifted and high-ability primary students at a large independent school in Melbourne 15 years later, I was drawn back to what had enabled me as a student to learn best during my primary years. First and foremost, I knew that it was connection and relationship.

Much had changed: not only was I a qualified teacher, but I was now a specialist educator with post-graduate qualifications in gifted education working in a large school of 2000 students. In this state-of-the-art educational setting, it is hard to believe that much could have been learned from the educational experience I had enjoyed in my tiny rural primary school, yet that could not be further from the truth. It was those memories of my primary experience that enabled me to look creatively at how I might be able to solve the problem before me.

The problem was: how to engage my gifted and highly able primary students in inquiry learning tasks enabling them to:

Devise an open research question

Engage in research to address that question

Work through a meaningful process of setting goals and checking progress

Create a sequence of tasks that enabled measurement of those question-based goals

Include some analysis of those measurements, and

Reach some well-researched conclusions.

It was a complex challenge, yet I firmly believed that teacher inter­vention and support, and a shared connection between student and teacher, could achieve such learning targets.

There started my research of mentoring processes, and my discovery of a whole new world of highly effective teaching and differentiated action, which transformed me as a teacher and a learner.

This book explores that research, and all that has unfolded as a result, including my master’s research, which concluded in 2009, and my new understanding of school culture and how this can be enhanced through mentor/mentee engagements. It also provides an alternative avenue for student engagement and student/teacher connection – an alternative that can be practical and effective, particularly following the recent Covid-19 pandemic when this engagement and connection was so sorely impacted.

My story of practical mentoring spans two decades of tried practice, and much of it is shared in this book. I am still amazed by what I have learned and what has taken place, but no one could question the extraordinary successes of the mentees in the many facets of mentorship and afterwards. From winning national academic competitions, both individually and collaboratively, sharing their stories at world conferences, reaching the highest levels of achievement in a range of academic and sporting domains, to perfect scores in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE).

I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I have had in education, and the freedom that my schools have afforded me in my teacher practice. Much can be said for a school that provides its teachers with a position description, then largely empowers its staff to enhance it. In fields such as gifted education where the skills and knowledge required are so specialised, much trust is required on the part of senior management, who need to rely on the integrity of their experts. This trust has enabled me to provide amazing opportunities for my student mentees, and these opportunities have led to their extraordinary achievements.

This is a story of mentorship that I felt needed to be told. It has been written to:

Support teacher mentors as they embark on different ways of creating positive connection with their students, supporting them socially, emotionally, and academically

Assist school leaders with strategies for student improvement – personally, within the well-being space, and academically

Provide school leaders with an avenue for promoting positive school culture and dramatically improving student academic outcomes.

I am confident that reading this book will open your eyes to what can be achieved in this educational space, and the vast possibilities of creative strategy in future teacher practice.

Chapter 1

Why mentoring?

A great mentor helps one to achieve what seems impossible. 

– Mariela Dabbah

Having worked in education for 32 years and having witnessed the abilities of many teachers in a variety of contexts, I have found that the best teachers demonstrate active, engaged and relational mindsets. The best teachers proactively seek to advance the abilities of their students, enabling them to take guided steps towards being their best selves. These teachers are naturally curious themselves and on behalf of their students, they use time well, have learned from their own experience, have a degree of wisdom, and are highly strategic. In their daily teaching they are active observers scanning for gaps or areas of deficit to address within their classrooms. When a problem presents itself, they are ready to act. This action initially might be further observation, as students can solve many of their own problems. Alternatively, it might be an active intervention. A good teacher will know the best course of action and be timely in their response.

A good teacher impacts every student

The teacher will impact every student in their class during every lesson of the day. It is important for the teacher to realise that this impact can be positive or negative. It is critical that the teacher quickly ascertains the needs of each student in their care for the students to engage with the lesson. Some students need to feel a sense of belonging before they are comfortable enough to engage, some may have a learning gap or deficit, or a processing issue leading to varying rates of retention, and others will pick up new concepts quickly, requiring extension and greater levels of challenge and complexity. The role of the teacher is a challenging one, as teachers need to be highly responsive and proactive to the needs of all students and to determine receptively and intuitively what is the best approach for the students before them.

Gone are the days when a teacher walks into the classroom, sits in the corner, and barks instructions at the class. Gone are the days of the sage on the stage, as described by McWilliam (2009), where the teacher fills students like vessels with knowledge and information that they will retain for future reference. A minority of students might learn this way, but the vast majority will not. These are antiquated methods. Not only does the teacher need to determine the social and emotional position of each student, but they also need to ascertain preferred ways of learning and respond accordingly.

A good approach is to start with an enthusiastic teacher welcome, to determine some learning intentions, and to commence with perhaps 10 minutes or so of well-thought-out and creatively presented direct teaching, to set a context for the lesson. What comes next will be an action response to this direct teaching on the part of the student, be it individually, in pairs, or in a small group. The action response might involve reading, writing, listening or speaking. It might involve technology; it might involve collaboration and research. These are just some of the varying ways of learning that the students might engage with.

The response needs to address success criteria, or a learning target set by the teacher, and each individual student needs to know the part they are playing. The