MENTORING: IN SEARCH OF MEANING
Sheryl Third (she/her), RECE, writes about mentoring being a strategy for professional learning and support from a historical perspective while asking herself a very important question- where do we go now? While promoting us to make connections to gratitude and to consider how our own willingness to learn from others impacts mentoring relationships, Sheryl dives into some prompts that help us reflect on how we can support one another.
For many years I have written about and supported the idea of mentoring in early childhood education. Back in 2006 for 10 years, we hosted an Appreciation event for Community Mentors at Fanshawe College. During this time, a monthly document was created called the Mentor Minute which was sent out to child care centres via email, and in 2015 these emails were turned into a blog called The Mentor Minute with the last post written in the Fall of 2018.
With the Government of Ontario’s focus, and as the profession is coming out of a pandemic, there has been a re-engagement with mentoring with the hiring of Community Animators.
This has opened up the conversation about how we approach mentoring each other, the students in our programs, and new employees in a profession that has suffered from a lack of care and financial recognition. From this perspective, there is an opportunity for a reset or what we may coin as Mentoring 2.0.
To begin, let us look at how our regulatory body defines mentoring: “A reciprocal, relationship-based and process-oriented professional learning experience between two individuals (a mentor and a mentee) in the early learning and care sector. The purpose of the relationship is to learn and improve professional practice through reflective practice, self-directed learning, and collaboration”. A mentor is an individual who shares and uses their knowledge, skills, and experiences to support and guide a mentee to improve their practice and acquire new skills” (CECE).
Listen to this short video about Standard 5!
After reviewing this context of mentoring and its historical application in our profession, below are three statements that help give context to mentoring from the College of Early Childhood Educators (CECE):
A reciprocal, relationship-based, and process-oriented professional learning experience
to learn and improve professional practice
shares and uses their knowledge, skills, and experiences to support and guide
Simon Sinek states “mentor relationships are not mentor-mentee, they should be mentor-mentor. One should only agree to be someone’s mentor if they too want a mentor for themselves” (Why Reciprocity Improves Mentor-Mentee Relationships, 2012)
This last statement mentions that to be open to being a mentor we must want to be mentored in return to pass along knowledge, and skills and building relationships may hold the key to rethinking our approaches. When we look at how this plays out in our day-to-day work this is where we can refocus our attention on a disposition of wonder, awe, joy, and passion for our work. If we are feeling rundown, unappreciated, or verging on burnout, the likelihood of a positive relationship or experience may very well reduce our capacity to mentor or be mentored.
In this, my wondering is if we shift our focus away from mentoring per se to what we can share with others, or what brings us joy- where is our wonder and awe in our current position? What gets me excited about my work, we may be better situated to pass this along to our colleagues, students, or upcoming leaders.
References
Capture Your Flag. (2012). Simon Sinek: Why Reciprocity Improves Mentor Mentee Relationships [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrWg1qy2WNI
College of Early Childhood Educators. (2018). CPL Resource Mentoring. https://www.college-ece.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CPL-Resource-Mentoring.pdf
College of Early Childhood Educators / Ordre des éducatrices et des éducateurs de la petite enfance. (2022). Revised CPL Program Webinar – May 11, 2022. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfUWdY1vG3A
About Sheryl Third:
Sheryl Third (she/her), RECE, has been active in the Childcare community in London since 1986. In 2003, she became a fulltime faculty member at Fanshawe College in the Early Childhood Education Program. Sheryl completed her Master of Arts in Educational Studies, in 2015. Her research interest is in reflective writing and practice in the field of early childhood education, writing papers on Mentoring and reflective practice as tools for professional learning. Sheryl is a member of the Strive Professional Learning Committee and the Strive Advisory Committee. To learn more about our committees, please visit Our Committees.
If you want to kick-start your thinking around this, listen to Episode 29: Animating Mentorship with Haille Ifabumuyi and Kayla Bartlett, or for more from Sheryl, listen to Episode 5: Wonder & Awe with Sheryl Third.
Also check out an upcoming professional learning event, Movie Night: Gratitude Revealed, facilitated by Sheryl Third.
Questions or comments?
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