Chapter 8: It’s Just What We Do: A Teacher’s Story of Trust, Support, and Friendship

This narrative study explores experiences with formal and informal mentoring through the perspectives of a fifth grade teacher, Lindsey. In her eighth year of teaching, Lindsey has participated in mentoring relationships of all types, both as a mentee and mentor. Through our dialogue, we delve deeply into informal and formal mentoring relationships from the standpoint of the same teacher, a process which has been missing from mentoring research (Desimone, Hochberg, Porter, Polikoff, Schwartz, & Johnson, 2014; JuarezTorres, Hurst, & Hurst, 2007; Klug & Salzman, 1991). As she shares her story, it is evident that she values several mentoring qualities, though trustworthiness is of the utmost importance. From her perspective, trust and mutual respect facilitate the birth of friendships that, in turn, increase the effective ness of mentoring relationships. The following chapter serves as a platform to share her story with the intent of prompting self-reflection from the reader.Mentoring relationships exist in a variety of forms, as any type of relationship can. The environment and culture in which the relationship exists can affect the dynamics and enactment of the traditionally described mentor/ mentee practices. Because of this, we are behooved to explore mentorship on an intimate level, particularly informal mentorship whose presence has been lacking in educational research. To date, very little research has been conducted on informal mentoring, and even fewer studies have been conducted that “allow simultaneous comparisons of formal and informal mentoring of the same teacher (Juarez-Torres, Hurst, & Hurst, 2007; Klug & Salzman, 1991)” (Desimone, Hochberg, Porter, Polikoff, Schwartz, & Johnson, 2014, p. 88). Given the gap in the literature, the research questions we explore in this study are as follows: (a) what are the teacher’s experiences with informal and formal mentoring as she began her teaching career; (b) how does she outline the differences between mentors and colleagues; and (c) how do the teacher’s experiences affect her personal mentoring style? This narrative study uncovers the experiences of an educator, Lindsey, in her eighth year of teaching, as she reflects upon her experiences with formal and informal mentorship, both as a mentee and a mentor. Although the authors of this paper are participant researchers, which we will explain further in the methodology section, we will sometimes refer to each other in third person (“Lindsey” and “Elizabeth”) throughout the chapter, simply to make the storytelling more fluid.