I am excited to have this opportunity to share my experience as a mentor in the ElevatEd Mentoring Program. I began this rewarding journey last September when my director offered me an opportunity to mentor a staff member who was new to the field of early education. The commitment consists of well facilitated online training sessions that focus on the foundations of mentoring and provide easy access to an abundance of resources. By using the mentoring language and strategies learned during these sessions, I have strived to create a respectful learning space for my mentee and I to have open conversations. Breakout rooms during training sessions provided a space for us to share our mentoring experiences with one another and offered a sense of community.

Please see below a useful guide with tips to begin the mentoring process.

• Mentor-Mentee Relationship: Building a strong and positive relationship is key to success. Gaining trust also plays an important role.

• Weekly Mentoring Meetings: Whether meeting in person, a zoom call, a phone call, even a casual lunch, you will create time for important relationship-building to take place.
• Clarifying the Mentor’s Role: Let your mentee know that your role is to listen, advise, and support.
• Goal Setting: Discuss and establish realistic expectations and goals for the school year.
• Classroom Visits/Observations: Have pre-observation conversations to explain your role as collector of information - not to critique but to advise. Drawing an actual diagram of the classroom that includes centers is a useful exercise to plan an optimal learning environment. This was also a helpful takeaway for me to use moving forward while planning my classroom setup.

Of course, with any learning process comes challenges and obstacles to overcome. Some of the most common challenges mentors shared were carving out time to meet on a weekly basis and navigating time during the regular school day to observe in the classroom. Once a routine was established, these issues lessened throughout the school year.

It has been an extremely rewarding experience to share my knowledge with an emerging educator to help mold them as they go down this very important career path. Along the way, I learned and gained from my mentee as well. I always maintain that there is so much more to learn through co-workers whether they have been teaching for years or at the start of their careers. We’ve shared laughs, tears, stories, and dreams of what lies ahead in our new (and not-so-new) careers! I hope sharing my experience as a mentor will inspire others to consider giving back to the career that many of us have chosen, and I believe it has shaped the person I am today. This past year has taught me the powerful lesson that when we work together as a team, the outcome can be one of friendship, collaboration, and an opportunity for self-reflection.

https://www.ecerj.org/articles/the-power-of-mentoring-in-early-education

Joan Jennings, Lead Teacher

Temple Beth Avodah

Newton, MA