In my current role as a mathematics teacher educator, I have the opportunity to learn with and from mentor teachers all over the country. As all the other blog posts have discussed, the work of mentoring a student teacher is one of the most challenging and rewarding professional learning experiences a teacher can engage in. It can be, as Anthony described, a jumble of emotions as you navigate supporting the students in your classroom and supporting your student-teacher. It can also be a way to push you to reflect on the choices you make in your classroom and why you make those choices, as Rosiane described. This becomes even more apparent when mentor teachers are explicitly centering issues of equity and justice in their classrooms. In this final blog of the series, I will share how mentor teachers have worked to explicitly center issues of equity and justice in their mentoring practice

What brought me to this work?

My desire to learn with and from mentor teachers comes from my own experience both as a Knowles Teaching Fellow and as a mentor teacher myself. Similar to Anna, Rosiane, and Anthony, I learned so much from the student teachers I mentored. I found the experience challenging, yet exceptionally rewarding. As Anna discussed in the first blog, mentoring student teachers helped me figure out why I made some of the moves I made in my classroom. For instance, a student teacher asked me why I let a student “derail” the whole lesson by writing on the board a solution that didn’t match what the other students were thinking. I was so confused, the lesson wasn’t derailed. I had been overjoyed that this particular student, who was often disengaged and had been positioned by other teachers as being a “troublemaker”, wanted to share his mathematical thinking. This led to a discussion about thinking not just about the mathematical goals (as the mentor teacher’s preparation program had stressed) but also thinking about which students get to be positioned as doers of mathematics.

When I left the classroom in 2019 to become a full-time teacher educator, I discovered the voices of mentor teachers were often missing from the math and science education literature about how to prepare future teachers to consider equity in their practice. It made me wonder, did my work even matter? Why wasn’t anyone talking about the thoughtfulness that I put into trying to illuminate my practice for student teachers? I knew it wasn’t just me (as the other blogs have made clear already); I had heard so many fifth-year teacher leadership stories from amazing Knowles Fellows who were mentoring student teachers and intentionally working to create more equitable classrooms. This started me on the journey of figuring out the ways mentor teachers center equity in their work with mentoring prospective teachers.

What does it mean to mentor for equity and justice?

Mentor teachers have described lots of different ways to mentor for equity and justice. It is a deeply relational and action-oriented practice, so what works for one mentor teacher may not work for another mentor teacher. Mentoring for equity and justice involves not just supporting student teachers to learn to teach the content, but also preparing them to disrupt inequitable practices, starting in their own classrooms. You may be wondering what this looks like in practice. My research has involved working with mentor teachers and documenting their stories of what this looks like in practice. Below, I will share how three mentor teachers (Sam, Dana, and Skylar are pseudonyms) described to me the ways they mentor for equity and justice.

Challenging Neutral Learning Environments

This involves supporting student teachers to see math and science classrooms not just as neutral learning environments, but as spaces where larger forces play out. This means:

• Helping them notice and name inequities—like who gets to participate and how ideas about ‘smartness’ are constructed.
• Using students’ experiences and stories as a lens to analyze their own school experiences and shift their focus from what they were taught to what students need.
• Probing their instructional choices to unpack the beliefs and systems shaping those choices.

For instance, Sam described to me how he probes student teachers’ instructional choices to unpack the beliefs and systems shaping those choices in the following way:

“helping [student teachers] reflect on how their lesson plans and their actions have helped their students learn….what are some things that they might do for, do differently to like better support students…or giving them think time or different structures that we’ve used [from Complex Instruction] like roles or explanation quizzes in ways that might be a little more specific to our students” (Sam, Summer 2023)

Here, Sam is sharing the ways he probes student teachers’ thinking to consider what supports students may need to access the mathematics in the classroom. Instead of just dictating how to construct the classroom, Sam engages the student teacher to consider what they are doing and who it is supporting.

Modeling Critical Self-Reflection

It also involves mentors modeling critical self-reflection—to show what it looks like to interrogate their own biases and how those biases shape classroom practices. This might involve:

• Sharing their own struggles with disrupting patterns of inequity.
• Helping student teachers see how students’ histories, identities, and community knowledge matter in the classroom.
• Guiding student teachers to notice patterns in how they talk about students and what those patterns reveal about their beliefs.

An example of guiding student teachers to notice patterns in how they talk about students and what those patterns reveal about their beliefs comes from Skylar, who worked with a student teacher who had a very different positionality than her and her student. She notes:

“There were different privileges and access that he had, so he came in with a different set of expectations for what teaching should be. He came in with a very strong idea of classroom management and with expectations, which there’s nothing wrong with having very clear expectations for what you want out of students, but also then there was no room for like anything to go wrong…we had those conversations about you’re not dictating. You are a human and need to remember that these are humans who will do what you don’t want them to do or don’t expect … I think he definitely developed a different lens for it.” (Skylar, Summer 2023)

Skylar was focused on probing the student teacher’s thinking about students and the expectations held for specific students. Particularly, she sought to probe the thinking of the student teacher related to the importance of flexibility and thinking about the classroom as a collective of humans. Skylar continued on to discuss how she attempted to find openings to talk about the classroom environment during their structured reflection time.

Envisioning Classrooms as Spaces of Possibility to Take Action Towards Justice

Mentoring for equity goes beyond awareness and reflection—it pushes both mentors and student teachers to envision how classrooms can be spaces of possibility and to take action toward justice. This includes:

• Identifying small but meaningful leverage points for disrupting inequities in their own teaching (like rethinking who participates in discussions or expanding what counts as math and science).
• Modeling how to center relationships and community wellness in classroom decision-making.

For instance, Dana described how she supported student teachers to consider how to disrupt inequities by finding “leverage points”. She shared with me how she approaches this with student teachers by making clear what they might be able to do and what they might not be able to do. She shared:

“you probably can’t do this because you’re a student teacher [or a new teacher] and like power dynamics, but like, what can you do? I feel like it’s a lot more noticing and understanding here’s this thing and it’ll probably show up again. In a perfect world, what would you like to do? And then how could you move yourself into a spot where you can then do it.” (Dana, Summer 2023)

Dana is highlighting the reality of being a teacher new to a school, but also making sure student teachers know these are systemic issues in education. She is supporting the student teacher to consider various ways to take action in the classroom, even if that action is delayed due to power dynamics.

Connecting Across the Blog Series

To start this blog series, Anna posed the question: How might mentoring change your teaching in ways you never expected?

Across this series, we each shared ways being a mentor teacher changed our practices. Anna shared how becoming a mentor teacher caused her to have to articulate various teacher moves that had just been second nature to her. Similarly, Anthony realized through early challenges with his first-ever student teacher how he needed to make space for Aaron to try and fail, similar to what Anthony hopes to cultivate in chemistry students. Rosiane shared the various ways she learned from the student teachers she had in her classroom. In this final blog, I shared what I have learned from mentor teachers who are working to explicitly center equity and justice in their practices.

In each of our stories and experiences, we shared various things to consider when becoming a mentor, lessons learned from mentoring, reflections from a first-time mentor teacher, and a way to think about a mentoring practice centered around equity. As we wrap up this series, we ask you to reflect on that opening question again for yourself: How might mentoring change your teaching in ways you never expected?