Find Your Flock

Intentionally gathering a network of support (Letter #4 to Preservice Teachers)

Dearest Future Educator,

Now that you’ve started to notice yourself more clearly— you will probably begin to notice something else.

You are not meant to do this alone.

There is a tendency in education to frame success as individual effort:
how well you perform, how quickly you adapt, how much you can carry.

But no educator becomes who they are in isolation.

You will need people.

Not just later—now.
People who will sit beside you in lectures and practicum seminars and wonder the same things you do.
People who will understand the mix of excitement and uncertainty without you having to explain it.

And beyond that, there will be others too:

Collaborating/Associate/Host/Supporting teachers will be mentors who guide you, but they may not be the ones who steady you.
There will be professors and instructors who stretch your thinking.
Classmates who become collaborators.
Educators you meet in passing who say one sentence that stays with you for years. Friends and family who remind you of who you are when you forget.

This is your flock.

Not because they are all the same.
But because they help you stay grounded, reflective, and mentorable.

Your people are not just those who make the journey easier.
They are those who help you stay connected to yourself while you grow.

They are a living network of learners, educators, mentors, and future colleagues who are developing alongside you, even if you haven’t met them all yet.

And your role in that community is not to wait to be found. It is to contribute your talents and strengths to an ecosystem that nurtures you.

It is to notice, to reach, to connect, to build.

Because your flock is not something you stumble into by chance.
It is something you begin to shape through the questions you ask, the relationships you nurture, and the way you choose to show up for others.

So as you move forward, keep asking:

Who stretches my thinking?
Who helps me stay grounded in what matters?
Who am I choosing to learn with—and from?

Pay attention to how people make you feel after the conversation ends. Do you feel more grounded? More curious? More capable? More yourself?

Gather a web of mentors who help create the conditions where you can keep growing.

Your people are not just those who make the journey easier.
They are those who help you stay connected to yourself while you grow.

And over time, you will begin to realize something important:
mentorship is rarely a single person guiding another from a place of certainty.
More often, it is a network of relationships that help us keep becoming.

Sometimes you will need encouragement.
Sometimes perspective.
Sometimes someone who challenges you to think differently or reminds you that you belong in the room.

Sometimes, without even realizing it, you will become that person for someone else.

And your flock grows each time you lean in, instead of withdrawing, and choose connection over isolation.

With You in Mentorship,

Noa Daniel, Denise Furlong, and Iolanda Volpe

https://sites.google.com/view/learnersfirstcompanionpage/home

Previous posts in this series: