DEVELOPING A YEAR-LONG CULTURE CIRCLE WITH BEGINNING TEACHERS: A COUNTERSTORY TO TRADITIONAL MENTORING MODELS

Abstract

Teacher retention rates persist as a major area of concern in American schools, and even more so when one considers the retention rates for teachers of color. Traditional models of mentoring have had some success in teacher retention; however, mentoring is not equitably employed in all schools and often follows a top-down, evaluative, advice-giving framework, privileging teachers’ assimilation to a school’s culture over the teachers’ own cultural ways of knowing and values. In response to this problem, the data for this qualitative study was collected through transcribing the storytelling of three first-year teachers as they engaged in a Freirean culture circle model of mentoring, which aimed to resist the traditional expert-to-novice approach. Instead, the culture circle focused on valuing storytelling, dialogic listening, empathy, and solidarity, as the participants and coordinator alike learned to talk about their teaching through a horizontal mentoring model. A method of Thematic Analysis was used to analyze the ways that participants enacted a theory of critical empathy through storytelling and dialogic listening. The analysis revealed the ways the group resisted narratives that devalue cultural and relational ways of knowing in academia and engaged instead in healing pedagogies of affirmation. Additionally, the research illuminated the ways that a culture circle model in which participants’ voices are centered can help new teachers story their own futures. This study matters because it offers a model of mentoring and professional development that is culturally responsive toward teachers and the knowledges that they bring to the profession.