Coaching and Mentoring for School Staff
Coaching and mentoring are excellent strategies that can promote and facilitate professional development.
Mentoring Can Counter Reversion
Recent research suggests that even teachers who learn the most current methods often revert to what they experienced from their own teachers. Since most of today’s teachers did not have preschool experiences, they look back to the earliest classroom experiences they can recall which involve a teacher talking to a group of quiet students sitting at their desks.
Because this model doesn’t work in a classroom of young children, mentoring offers a promising reform in education. The use of mentoring can counteract these “old memories” and help teachers teach in more relaxed, innovative, and developmentally appropriate ways.
Improved Performance and Retention
Research focused on the practice of mentoring suggests that such a program can benefit our profession by cutting the dropout rate as much as 35%. The same research documented that those teachers who receive the least mentoring leave the field much more quickly than others.
Bridging Theory and Practice
Coaching is an important learning strategy that supports professional growth. Coaching can address a range of characteristics and developmental needs that contribute to the effectiveness of a teacher.
Mentoring is a supportive, long-term relationship between an experienced mentor and their less experienced mentee. The idea is that the more senior mentor passes on knowledge and guidance as the mentee finds their feet in a new role.
Targeted Guidance and Support
Brienza’ s coaching and mentoring services provide targeted guidance and support enabling educators to successfully implement the skills and approaches learned during workshop sessions. Mentoring provides the bridge from theory to practice and it is through practice that a principal’s educational vision becomes reality.
Brienza’s mentoring for teachers is often structured around fulfilling standards, such as performance management targets, which provides plenty of documentary evidence of the mentoring and its outcomes. The process ends when the mentee is confident or capable enough to carry on with their duties without oversight.