Despite the best efforts of state or district personnel, when it comes to mentoring and ensuring successful mentoring practices, what happens between mentor and beginning educator at the school level can make or break educators’ perceptions of the value and efficacy of mentoring. This makes school administrators’ role in mentoring an important one. To ensure successful mentoring at a local level, school administrators can:

🢦 Thoughtfully assign mentors to mentees and make sure selected teachers are agreeable to being mentors. After considering the needs of beginning educators as well as the strengths of school personnel, administrators should work to make mentor-educator assignments that build on strengths while providing needed support. Issues of convenience, like scheduling or proximity, may need to be reconsidered to create more effective mentoring partnerships. Once an administrator has identified a “good fit” for a beginning educator, it is important to communicate with the teacher who will be assigned as mentor to ensure willingness to engage in this capacity. If teachers are asked to mentor without having consented to serve in the role, they are unlikely to provide quality experiences for the beginning educator or work to create a positive and supporting relationship.

🢦 Communicate clear expectations to mentors. It is important that teachers who are assigned to mentor a beginning educator have agreed to and know they have a mentoring assignment. Administrators should never presume that a mentor knows what is expected. Instead, administrators should clearly outline expectations, including who the mentor can contact with additional questions related to the role.

🢦 Create feedback loops that allow mentors and beginning educators access to decision-making personnel. If an administrator has clearly communicated expectations related to mentoring, then much of the day-to-day work associated with the mentoring relationship can be left to those involved. However, administrators can signal ongoing support of the mentoring relationship by establishing protocols that allow mentors and beginning educators to communicate their individual and collective needs and concerns to someone with decision-making power. Both mentors and beginning educators should feel like they can contact school administration with concerns or for additional support as needed.

🢦 Build faculty capacity for mentoring as part of the school culture. School administrators who are familiar with the Mentor Roles and Competencies can work to support the development of faculty-wide capacity for these roles by embedding development of these capacities into faculty meetings and other faculty-wide discussions. Building a school culture of collaboration and establishing a clear vision for communication and support embeds a mentoring mentality across the school that can work to supplement and sustain formal mentoring efforts.

🢦 Provide professional learning to support mentors. To improve their craft, mentors need access to ongoing opportunities for professional learning. Administrators should establish the professional learning needs of mentors as a priority because mentors’ learning will directly impact the development of the beginning teachers they serve. Occasionally allowing mentors and their assigned educators to attend professional learning opportunities together can also be of benefit.

🢦 Align schedules and calendars to prioritize time for mentoring activities. Find ways to create extra time in mentor and beginning educators’ schedules to allow for quality mentoring activities such as observation to occur. Anticipate and provide beginning educators and mentors time to discuss how to navigate non-classroom expectations like parent-teacher conferences and school-wide assessments. Sacrifices of time to support quality mentoring interactions will reap benefits in teacher retention and student learning that will make the sacrifice worthwhile.