Stewardship asks a different question
Not only: What do I know and do well? But: How will other people learn this work, gain access to professional opportunities, and improve it after me?
Begin by identifying practices, judgments, institutional knowledge, relationships, or routines that you enact fluently but rarely explain—across teaching teachers, supervision and feedback, mentoring, inquiry into practice, institutional navigation, and program or partnership work. For each, mark whether the reasoning is visible, partly visible, or mostly tacit.
Who currently has access to me?
- Who receives regular access? — Who gets mentoring, explanation, feedback, or sponsorship from me as a matter of routine?
- Who is nearby but not invited? — Who may not feel that seeking access is available to them?
- Who is missing entirely? — Who is absent because of role, status, geography, identity, appointment type, or institutional boundaries?
- Am I reproducing my own pathway? — Am I developing only people who already resemble the routes I followed?
Move from modeling to making visible
- Doing the work efficiently — Explain what you noticed and why you chose the move.
- Inviting someone to observe — Give them a lens for what to notice.
- Giving advice — Help them reason through alternatives and consequences.
- Correcting a problem — Let them rehearse, try, receive feedback, and revise.
- Opening a door — Explain how the opportunity works and help them build their own access.
- Holding institutional knowledge — Teach how decisions actually move through the system.
Create opportunities to enact—not just observe
- Co-plan and teach part of a course
- Lead a supervision or debrief conversation
- Design or revise a tool
- Facilitate a professional learning conversation
- Participate in program review or accreditation work
- Join a partnership or governance meeting
- Lead a small inquiry cycle
- Mentor someone newer than themselves
What could an emerging teacher educator do with support rather than watch you do?
Steward the system, not just the individual
- Reduce dependence on goodwill — What structure could make mentoring less dependent on personal goodwill?
- Leave something behind — What resource, protocol, archive, orientation, or community should exist after I am no longer here?
- Distribute what you carry — What responsibility am I carrying that should be distributed? What knowledge should become public rather than remain mine?
My stewardship commitment
Name four commitments: one person you will intentionally develop, one opportunity you will open, one piece of tacit knowledge you will make visible, and one structure you will help leave stronger.
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