The Mentor Circles with Faith Evans
By Martha TraczI went to the presentation by Faith Evans entitled “What Goes Around Comes Around.” I did not know what to expect in the beginning because it did not seem like you can get that much across in an hour and a half. After a few minutes, I was able to see that the presentation was going somewhere.
We were told to think of a word that describes us as a group and then Ms. Evans wrote it up on a sheet. Our group came up with “learners,” since not all of us were teachers, some of us were students. Then, we had to think of nouns that described us as we always were or should strive to be and not just things that we do. Everyone in the group had to think of a couple nouns and say them out loud because we had to fill up four sheets with these nouns. We said words like listener, helper, asker, builder, etc.
After filling up these sheets, we then had to think of which of these nouns best described us. This led up to the next part. We had to say our name and our strength (the noun that best describes us) and then our area of growth (something that we needed help with). After this, we were paired up with someone who could help us with our area of growth because that was something the other person was good at. For example, I put my area of growth as improvisation (improviser) and I was paired up with Beth, who helped me see that I could still prepare for ways to improvise by using visual aids and being more confident in my thoughts and actions.
Then I helped Fara with her area of growth, which was procrastination (I am a procrastinator as well, but we had to compromise since not everyone’s strength matched up with another person’s area of growth). I told Fara that she could write down her assignments in a planner and change the way she did her assignments by not waiting until the last minute. She would also probably change when she became a teacher because you need to be organized when you have students that depend on you (I could actually use my own advice for that one).
In the end, Mentor circles made me realize that by helping others, you can help yourself. Also, it was great to see people working together after knowing each other for a short time. Ms. Evans told us that by having everyone list nouns that describe themselves, it was a way to make people comfortable about themselves in front of the group. This was a good point and I will remember to use it if I were to use Mentor circles in my teaching career