Want to change the career path of an early career teacher, or just improve your own CPD?

Become a mentor. Leading by example is life-changing, says Professional Coordinating Mentor, David Cumbers.

It might have been 23 years ago, but the guidance my mentor gave me still feels invaluable. Like the importance of fixing small issues early when it comes to controlling the classroom environment. In fact, I remember once being stopped halfway through a Year 8 lesson with the words: “If you don’t stop that child clicking their pen, I will”. I hadn’t even noticed the sound.

It was the simple, practical things that he passed on that were so valuable – things like always cleaning the previous lesson from the blackboard before you start your own lesson. Those tips are still crystallised in my brain, all these years later, and it’s why I was so keen to get into mentoring myself ¬– and for the lovely sense of being helpful at the start of someone else’s career. 

I became a subject mentor in my second year of teaching science. From the start I was able to build links with UCL scientists through the IOE programme, and today there is a strong and effective relationship between UCL and my school, Kingsbury High. For the last ten years, I have been a Professional Coordinating Mentor, meeting with my PGCE students – all from different institutions – weekly.

The coordination aspect is important: teaching attracts a great mix of people, which is very welcome, but also requires different mentoring approaches. A PGCE student straight out of college may need help learning what it is to be a professional, while a more mature trainee teacher, with a wealth of corporate experience behind them, can take time to figure out what reasonable behaviour looks like for young people.

This school year so far has been all about getting back to the normal experience of classroom teaching. Last year, we had PGCE students who started taking classes online without ever having been on site. Much of lockdown I was concentrating on the technology and mechanisms of delivering online learning rather than the content. 

So, it was great that right at the beginning of the pandemic I got a call from IOE to ask what questions they should be asking and what help they could provide. I discussed setting up the school’s online learning experience with the UCL science team and ended up making a video about our journey through online learning. I’m not an expert in the field, so it was nice to be asked. Now I am responsible for the school’s online learning programme.

Many of us found online teaching a very lonely experience – and it was a real mentoring challenge. I was asking people I had never met to build a relationship with a classroom of children they had never met via Google Meets. Through the IOE, I found a sense of community with other professional coordinating mentors as we all faced new issues. I am lucky to have been working with the IOE at UCL for a long time, and in many ways the people there feel like family. There is a genuine sense of partnership. And when things don’t go according to plan, there is always someone I can turn to for help. 

And in the end, it’s all about the big picture. At Kingsbury, we take trainee teachers in part because we feel mentoring others offers our staff excellent continuing professional development (CPD). Mentoring can be a stepping-stone to managing a team as head of department in your own career. But it is also one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. It’s a wonderful moment when you sit at the back of the class alongside a PGCE student’s mentor and you both smile at the same moment when that new teacher does something incredible with the class.

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David Cumbers is Professional Coordinating Mentor at Kingsbury High School.