Questions to Ask Your Mentor Teacher
Questions for a trainee or early-career teacher to ask the experienced teacher hosting them, covering planning, behavior, marking, parents, and how the two of you will work together.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How did you end up teaching, and did you plan on it?
Why ask it
A short answer to open with. Many mentor teachers arrived by an indirect route, and hearing it makes the rest of the conversation less formal.
How do you plan a lesson, and how long does it actually take you?
Why ask it
Ask for the real number. Trainees routinely assume experienced teachers plan in ten minutes and conclude that they themselves are slow.
What does your first week with a new class look like?
Why ask it
The routines set in the first days do most of the behavior work for the rest of the year. Notice how much time goes on procedure rather than content.
How do you decide what to cut when a lesson is running out of time?
Why ask it
Knowing what can be dropped is the hardest thing to pick up from watching, because experienced teachers make the decision silently.
What do you do with a student who has quietly checked out?
Why ask it
More useful than a general question about engagement, because the answer is usually one small move: a seat change, a job to do, a word at the door.
What happens the first time a class tests you?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be concrete and unglamorous, and hearing one normalizes the fact that it will happen to you within weeks.
What does your marking routine look like week to week?
Why ask it
Marking is what makes new teachers drown. Ask about volume and timing rather than philosophy: how many books a night, and which night.
How do you give feedback that students actually act on?
Why ask it
Look for the mechanism rather than the wording. The teachers who get action usually build time into the lesson for students to respond.
How do you adapt one lesson for the range in a single class?
Why ask it
Ask what they do in practice, not what the plan says. The honest answer is usually two or three adjustments, not five parallel worksheets.
What do you do when a student is struggling for reasons outside the classroom?
Why ask it
Tells you the referral route in this school and how much of it a teacher is expected to carry personally.
How do you prepare for a difficult conversation with a parent?
Why ask it
Ask what they say in the first thirty seconds. That opening is the part trainees get wrong, and it decides how the rest goes.
Which technology has been worth the effort, and which hasn't?
Why ask it
Invites a candid answer instead of a list of tools. Most experienced teachers keep two or three things and quietly abandon the rest.
How do you stay warm with students without losing authority?
Why ask it
The boundary is easier to see in examples than in principle: what they will and will not joke about, how they use names, what happens at the door.
How do you work with the other adults in the room?
Why ask it
Teaching assistants and co-teachers can make a lesson work or fall apart, and almost nobody teaches trainees how to brief them.
How do you take critical feedback on your own teaching?
Why ask it
You are about to be observed constantly. Hearing how an experienced teacher handles it makes the process feel less like a verdict on you.
What do you protect in your week so the job stays sustainable?
Why ask it
Concrete answers, one evening untouched, no email after a fixed hour, are worth more than general advice about balance.
What did your first year cost you, and what would you do differently?
Why ask it
The honest version of this is worth more than most training sessions. Expect specifics about workload and about one particular class.
What's rewarding about an average day, rather than a good one?
Why ask it
Filters out the sentimental answer and gets at what actually sustains a long career in a classroom.
When would you like me to step in, and when should I just watch?
Why ask it
Sets expectations early and avoids the two common failures: sitting at the back for six weeks, or taking over before you are ready.
What would you like to see from me by the end of this placement?
Why ask it
Ask for something observable. It gives you both a way to judge progress that is not just a general impression at the end.
Working alongside a mentor teacher
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting useful answers
Ask after the lesson, not during it
Note your question and raise it in a free period. Interrupting mid-lesson costs the class more than it gains you.
Bring a specific observation
Asking how they decide who to call on gets a better answer than asking for any advice, because it shows you were watching.
Ask for numbers, not principles
How long planning takes, how many books they mark a night, how many detentions they set in a week. Figures give you something to measure yourself against.
What to watch for while observing
- The first ninety seconds of the lesson, and what is already on the board when students walk in.
- What they ignore. Experienced teachers let small things go on purpose.
- How instructions are given: how many at once, and whether they are checked before work starts.
- What happens when a student gets something wrong in front of the class.
- How the lesson ends, and who is dismissed first.
Common mistakes
Reading lesson feedback as a verdict on you
Observation notes are about the lesson in front of them. Trainees who take them personally stop taking risks, which slows everything down.
Copying the manner instead of the method
What works for a teacher the class has known for three years will not work for you in week two. Take the structure, not the persona.
Staying out of the way
Waiting to be asked can look like disinterest. Offer to take a small part of a lesson early, even if it is only the starter or the exit routine.