Trekking with Teacher-Friends: A Different Way to Think About Professional Learning
Teaching is an adventure. Not necessarily the kind of adventure that involves hanging from a rope on the side of a mountain, but the kind that requires us to navigate unexpected obstacles, changing terrain, and occasional detours. As John Amatt (n.d.) reminds us, “Adventure is an attitude we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life.” For teachers, that attitude can make all the difference.
The metaphor of trekking offers a fresh way to think about professional learning and teacher growth. Rather than viewing professional development as something assigned to teachers, completed in isolation, or delivered through a one-size-fits-all workshop, trekking invites teachers to choose their own path, their own destination, and the people who will walk alongside them. This matters because teaching itself is complex, personal, and human. So why is professional learning so often one-size-fits-all?
Why Teachers Need a Different Kind of Professional Learning
Teachers leave teaching for many reasons. Research indicates that working conditions—including disciplinary problems, facilities, and work assignments—are associated with teacher turnover (Nguyen et al., 2020). Teachers also report dissatisfaction with school management, accountability and testing requirements, and decision-making policies as reasons for leaving the profession (Ingersoll et al., 2022).
These challenges remind us that retaining teachers requires more than asking them to become more resilient or offering another professional development session. Teachers need opportunities to experience professional growth, connection, curiosity, and joy.
This is where mutual mentoring can play an important role.
Mutual mentoring is a reciprocal, two-way professional interaction between teacher-friends. It emphasizes equality, shared learning, professional growth, and emotional support. Rather than positioning one teacher as the expert and another as the novice, mutual mentoring recognizes that every teacher has knowledge, experience, questions, and insights to contribute.
Sometimes the most meaningful professional learning comes from finding someone who is willing to reach out a hand and help us along the trail—and from being willing to do the same for someone else.
Choose Your Trekking Partner
Trekking begins with a choice: Who will walk with you?A trekking partner does not have to be someone in the same grade level, department, or position. In fact, a different perspective may be exactly what makes the journey worthwhile.
Consider the teacher you admire at your school. Who brings fresh ideas? Who makes you laugh in meetings? Who inspires your next step? Who can you talk with honestly about the realities of teaching?
A teacher-friend can become a professional companion who provides encouragement, challenges assumptions, shares ideas, and listens without judgment. The relationship is not necessarily formal. It does not require a program, evaluation, meeting schedule, or administrative assignment. It can begin with something as simple as, “Want to take a walk and talk about that lesson?”
What’s in Your Backpack?
Every trek requires a backpack. Teachers carry backpacks, too—although ours may be filled with more than water, snacks, and extra layers.
Our professional backpacks contain our assumptions about ourselves, our students, teaching, and the future. They contain curriculum materials, instructional strategies, successes, disappointments, expectations, and memories.
Sometimes, however, we carry things we no longer need. Maybe it is an old lesson plan that no longer serves our students. Maybe it is perfectionism. Maybe it is an assumption about what students can or cannot do. Maybe it is a past experience that continues to influence how we approach our work. Trekking with teacher-friends creates opportunities to stop, open the backpack, and ask some important questions.
Unpacking does not mean abandoning everything we know. Instead, it means becoming intentional about what we choose to carry forward. We may decide to put down perfectionism and pick up curiosity. We may leave behind assumptions and make room for new research. We may release an outdated practice and repack an adventurous spirit.
Trail Talks: Professional Learning Through Conversation
One of the simplest and most powerful tools available to teachers is conversation. Mutual mentoring creates space for three kinds of teacher-friend interaction: intentional dialogue, informal conversation, and intimate “heart work.”
Dialogue is intentional, intellectual, and inclusive. It allows teachers to share information and experiences and can help us cross professional and personal boundaries (Hooks, 1994).
Conversation is more informal. It gives teachers a relational space to report news, share thoughts, discuss ideas, and express feelings. As Nhất Hạnh (2013) describes, communication can become a source of nourishment.
Then there is what might be called good talk about good teaching—the intimate heart work that happens when teachers consider common challenges and seek opportunities for growth (Palmer,1993).
These conversations matter because teaching practice is complex and constantly changing. As Loughran (2013) notes, teaching requires responding to varied learning demands. No teacher has every answer. But teachers can help one another ask better questions, and seek better answers.
During a trail talk, a teacher-friend might ask: What do you like about your practice and want to continue? What would you change if you could? Where might you find inspiration? What brings you joy? What gives you hope?
Sometimes the conversation itself becomes the professional development.
Choose the Trek, Not Just the Hike
A hike can be a short trip with a predetermined route. A trek suggests something longer, more intentional, and more adventurous. Professional learning can be a trek.
Choose a teacher-friend. Choose a destination—perhaps curriculum, reading, mathematics, classroom management, student engagement, or simply finding more joy in teaching. Get your boots dirty. Reflect on the journey. Take a detour when something interesting appears.
Most importantly, remember that the destination is not simply becoming a better teacher. It is becoming a teacher who can continue growing while remaining connected to the reasons teaching matters. At the end of the trek, open your backpack one more time.
What are you ready to put down? What are you ready to carry forward?
Schools benefit when teachers have opportunities to learn from and with one another. Mutual mentoring can contribute to improved culture and morale, the implementation of learning into practice, renewed curiosity, an adventurous spirit, and happier teachers and students.
The next adventure does not have to be a solo climb. Find a teacher-friend. Put on your boots. Pick a trail. And start trekking.
References
Amatt, J. (n.d.). Adventure as an attitude [Keynote address]. One Step Beyond World Wide. Calgary, AB, Canada.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Ingersoll, R. M., Merrill, E., Stuckey, D., Collins, G., & Harrison, B. (2022). Five trends shaping the teaching force. National Association of State Boards of Education.
https://nasbe.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/2022/09/Ingersoll-Merrill-Stuckey-Collins-Harrison_Sept-2022-Standard.pdf
Loughran, J. (2013). Pedagogy: Making sense of the complex relationship between teaching and learning. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 118–141. https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12003
Nguyen, T. D., Pham, L. D., Crouch, M., & Springer, M. G. (2020). The correlates of teacher turnover: An updated and expanded meta-analysis of the literature. Educational Research Review, 31, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100355
Nhất Hạnh, T. (2013). The art of communicating. HarperCollins Publishers.
Palmer, P. J. (1993). Good talk about good teaching: Improving teaching through conversation and community. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 25(6), 8–13.
