From now until 5 November we’ll be offering teachers in the central south region the opportunity to improve their skills, understanding or confidence in particular areas of teaching, by applying to be mentored by an Arts Champion.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is a cost-effective system of semi-structured guidance whereby one person shares their knowledge, skills and experience to assist others to progress

Why might this be good for me and my school?

Mentoring gives you the opportunity to reflect, to develop your awareness, knowledge and skills, to value and build on your existing experience, and to progress your teaching practise towards an agreed personal and/or organisational goal.

Both you and your school team will benefit from you having a mentor. Your school will be showing its commitment to the workforce and your colleagues will benefit from the different approaches and new ideas you’ll bring back to your workplace.

In some cases, a mentor can also support other colleagues.

How much time will it take?

We anticipate that mentors will meet their mentees on a monthly/ six-weekly basis throughout this academic year. Meeting times should be arranged in twilight periods at the convenience of both mentee and mentor.

What might I realistically achieve with a mentor?

Mentoring is all about supporting you to achieve a particular goal, so you’ll need to be clear and realistic about this.  Examples might include:

A teacher with some music background but not a singing specialism wanting to build skills and confidence to lead and set up a school choir in school.

Or

A non arts teacher to be supported to work collaboratively with artists and or the arts faculty to develop more creative activity in their classroom practise.

You don’t need to be an arts specialist, but you will need to have a goal in mind that helps you develop an aspect of expressive arts practice within your teaching.

You’ll need to have the agreement of your head teacher or senior management team before you begin, although we don’t anticipate that the mentoring sessions will take place during school hours.

You’ll need to be willing to give up ‘twilight time’ for your  mentoring and/or to arrange meetings around your, and your mentor’s, timetable.

We’re not able to pay for teachers cover if you do need to be out of the classroom for any mentoring sessions.

What does it involve?

1. Initial matching meeting
   Mentor and mentee will meet and get to know each other on an informal basis to see if they feel that they will get on and be a good mentoring match.

If after this first conversation / meeting they are both happy to proceed then the mentoring relationship will continue as follows:

2. Mentoring contract meeting – a first conversation to set up the parameters of the mentoring relationship. This will include agreeing:

1. Approximate duration of the mentoring (6 – 9 months)
2. Dates andtimes of meetings (as far as possible)
3. A mutually convenient and suitable place of meeting
4. Aims and objectives to hopefully be achieved during the relationship

Six meetings will follow over the next few months at regular intervals as agreed during the contract meeting until the end of the set period.