On Mentoring: Warmth, not Heat

Dear mentors,

This documentary was filmed as part of ELTAM MK‘s project Consolidating and Scaling up Macedonian Mentoring Network (MMN) funded by A. S. Hornby Educational Trust.

MMN use Angi Malderez’s mentoring protocol called Systematic Informed Reflective Practice (SIRP, Malderez, 2024) to support teachers making sense of their classroom experiences in a safe, non-judgemental manner. Within MMN, teachers alternate between human and AI-supported mentoring experiences in Noticing. The project is managed on Mosaic, the teacher development platform.

SIRP breaks down post-lesson reflection into five distinct steps:

1. What happened?
2. How can I understand this?
3. What else do I know?
4. Most likely explanation?
5. So, what now?

In the summer of 2025 Angi privately visited North Macedonia. MMN thought this was a fantastic opportunity to meet Angi and chat about their experiences of using SIRP. Angi kindly agreed to talk to the group, whose development she had followed and supported from the very start.

In the documentary Angi talks about the origins of SIRP, how teachers learn, how teacher noticing can be supported, the ‘learned helplessness’ that mentor comments can develop, the empowerment from arriving at one’s own informed decisions, the value of sticking at it even when development is hard and requires time, and the importance for teachers to keep tinkering.

Many thanks for @Suteren for the hard work, grace and avant-garde style they brought to this project.