The AP/Dean’s Role as a Teacher Mentor

You’ve built foundational relationships with teachers this year. As you foster those relationships moving forward, your role provides you the unique opportunity to look for mentoring moments--the chance to coach growth and development in others.

As you know from your experience in SAI’s Mentoring Program this year, the key to a successful mentoring relationship is trust. This is true for the relationships you build with teachers as well. These approaches can help you foster those relationships:

• Be genuine. Think presence--eye contact, focus; phone away; call them by name.
• Make connections beyond school. Know your staff’s interests and passions. Who are their family members? Their pets? What’s going on in their lives? Pay attention to their responses --notice what isn’t being said.
• Remember the conversation. When you’re fully present, not only do you build trust, it’s easier to remember what was said, where you left off. You can follow up. People experience you remembering as you caring.
• Be intentional. Seek out that staff member you haven’t yet been able to connect to. What do they like? Ask them about that. Learn something about what they like and go back again the next day to discuss further. Return the next day. Eventually, you’ll feel that connection.

Moving it to Mentoring
Once you have a trusting, genuine relationship, you can begin to offer mentoring and coaching. Work with the teacher on goal-setting, ask how you can contribute to the teacher’s growth, observe, provide descriptive and actionable feedback, share insights and stories, invite discussion, and stay focused in supporting the teacher in attaining their goals.

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