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Abstract
This article explores elements of the professional development of a pre‐tenured teacher education professor. I am that professor and I trace my journey of growth, which was aided by peer mentoring. First, I present a brief discussion on literature associated with mentoring that I found pertinent, followed by how mentoring has emerged as I re‐designed a teacher education course to better meet the needs of pre‐service teachers. This course previously posed great difficulties for me in linking theory to practice. In this context, mentoring helped me improve my teaching practice through critical conversations with a mentor. It documents my struggles to improve my teaching at the university level. In narrating my journey I am not presenting a model of best practice but, rather, highlighting how mentoring allowed me to reflect on and improve my teaching practice.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the University of Ottawa for the grant to allow pursuit of this work. The author would also like to thank all mentors, Ben Levin, J. Gary Knowles, Maurice Taylor and Terry Orlick, for sharing their own teaching moments and for continuing to inspire with their teaching ideas. The author also wishes to thank Alex Alexandrou for providing invaluable feedback on the drafts of this manuscript.