Host Teachers Are Mentors

Creating Practicum Experiences Rooted in Growth, Agency, and Belonging

Dearest Gracious Host, Associate, Cooperating, or Collaborating Teacher,

The faculties of education across North America use a bevy of terms to describe you: host teacher, associate teacher, cooperating teacher, or collaborating teacher. Many educators, regardless of the term used to refer to them, enter a teacher candidate’s practicum experience believing they are expected to be the model teacher—the exemplar whose role is to demonstrate expertise while a future teacher observes and imitates. But the practicum is not about replication; it is about learning, growth, and developing professional agency.

While expertise certainly matters, this framing can create unnecessary pressure. It suggests that one person must perform “perfect teaching” while the other remains a passive observer. In reality, it can leave host teachers feeling they must have all the answers, and teacher candidates feeling as though their role is simply to watch and absorb.

But regardless of the title you hold, the role you are stepping into is that of a mentor.

Mentorship asks for something different.

Rather than performing teaching, mentorship makes teaching visible.

Think back to your own practicum experiences. Chances are, what you needed most was not a perfect teacher. You needed someone willing to let you into their thinking—someone who made visible the decisions, uncertainties, adjustments, and reflections that shape the work of teaching every day.

You wanted to understand:

• Why was that decision made?

• What was the intention behind that lesson?

• What didn’t go as planned?

• What might be done differently next time?

• How are relationships built with students?

• What happens on the days when teaching feels difficult?

The mentors who leave the deepest impression are rarely the ones who appear flawless. They are the ones who invite others behind the curtain of practice.

Most teacher candidates will not remember every lesson they observe. They will remember how they were welcomed. They will remember whether they felt safe to ask questions, share ideas, and take risks. They will remember whether they felt like a guest in the room—or a valued member of a professional community.

And they will remember how that experience shaped their confidence and sense of possibility as an educator.

A mentor does not stand on a pedestal.

A mentor stands beside.

The goal is not to create a copy of yourself. It is to support another educator in discovering who they are becoming. Your role is to create the conditions for growth: to share expertise, offer perspective, ask questions, provide encouragement, and invite reflection.

Sometimes that means modelling. Often it means listening. It always means learning alongside.

When this happens, the practicum becomes more than an apprenticeship to one teacher’s way of teaching. It becomes an invitation into the profession itself.

You are not being asked to be the perfect example of teaching.

You are being invited to be a mentor.

And mentorship begins not with having all the answers, but with making space for another educator to think, contribute, and grow into their practice.

Yours in Mentorship,
Noa Daniel, Iolanda Volpe, and Denise Furlong

This is the first in a series of Letters From The Mentoree for host/associate/cooperating/collaborating teachers