Mentoring

I have been in your shoes! I can guide any leader in your school district from my own experiences over my 32 year career in education. Further, I have kept up with best practices in education in order to stay current with modern approaches that work best in our school districts. Recently, I completed the MASSP (Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals) Strengthening Leaders Mentor Coach Training. Having been an elementary principal, curriculum director for over 10 years, and a superintendent, I am well equipped to help your district with any mentoring needs that you may have.

As part of MCL - Section 380.1249b, Michigan legislation requires this component of mentoring:

(o) As part of the performance evaluation system, a school district, intermediate school district, or public school academy shall assign a mentor or coach to each school administrator, not including a school district superintendent, an intermediate superintendent, or a chief administrator, for the first 3 years in which the school administrator is in a new administrative position.

MCL - Section 388.1627h Mentoring grants for teachers, counselors, and administrators

Section 27 Mentoring and Induction Grants are providing some funding to support this legislation.

See "Deliverables" below for more details.

Deliverables

Establishing a Relationship

It's critical for me to establish a trusting relationship with the mentee. I take the time to do this by spending the necessary time to get to know the person, the school district and their specific needs to better support them in their pursuit of lifelong learning.

Actions

Develop a series of action steps that the mentee and mentor will take together . This will result in actions that will support the goals that the mentee develops early on in the process.

Listening / Questioning

Adequate time is spent actively listening to the mentee in order to fully understand what their goals, and the goals of the school district are, to better support their leadership skills. Further, deeper questioning techniques will be explored in order to develop strategies for sustained change in the desired goal areas.

Planning and Goal Setting

Establishing a plan, with a goal setting process is critical! This includes asking a series of questions such as:

* How connected are the goals associated with the mentees values, beliefs, strengths?

* How will these goals help improve performance at work?

How do these goals align to the vision of the school district?

Awareness

Expanding awareness around your environment, relationships, organizations, beliefs, and the people you work with is a very important step in the mentoring process.

Progress/Accountability

The mentee and mentor will work together to establish action steps centered around the agreed upon goals. Further, a realistic timeline, with a series of check-ins to measure the progress on these goals is essential. It's important to hold both the mentor and mentee accountable in order for growth to take place.