Today, is the second day of my 4-day “Mentoring Novice Teachers” workshop conducted by the SEED Institute Singapore. We were fed with many information,  but the one that I will share in this blog is the mentoring system.

The following are the steps often followed by organizations to start and sustain a meaningful mentoring process:

1. Define the business case for mentoring. Why do you need to mentor your teachers? What is your justification? Do you want to increase retention rate of your teachers? Do you want to improve your teachers’ quality of teaching? In this step, you are to clarify the need to mentor by identifying the area where your mentoring will focus on.

2. Establish a mentoring strategy. This is the point where the senior management and others will come together to set up long term and short term goals. Also, they will design strategies and plan the mentoring implementation.

3. Select mentees and mentors. The steering committee will define the criteria for selecting and matching mentors and mentees. The criteria will be the basis in identifying who will be the mentees and who will mentor them.

4. Provide mentor and mentee skill training. Send mentors for mentoring course. Mentoring program will be successful if mentors are provided with formal training.

5. Link up mentees and mentors. Create a mentoring agreement that will include the goals and objectives of both the mentors and mentees, how and when they will meet the objectives set, and the confidentiality of their agreement.

6. Begin the mentoring process. The mentoring process has various stages such as introduction, foundation, orientation. collaboration, personal framework, professional framework, professional development and transition. Make sure to go over with your mentees all these processes until you have achieved your goals.

7. Evaluate the program. Check whether the mentee has met the objectives set at the beginning of the program. Also, identify how successful was the program in achieving the business case goals like retention rate of teachers or developing teachers’ skills. To formally end the program, mentor and mentee can decide whether they want to continue the mentoring or stop as the mentee has shown confidence in doing assigned task independently.

I hope you have something to take away from this sharing. Happy mentoring! Bring out the best from your mentee!