blog




  • Essay / My Motivation to Become an Effective Mentor

    Revisiting my past ten years ago, I realized that I did not have a suitable mentor to guide me as a mentee. I learned on my own, through trial and error. Throughout my journey, I consider myself a mentor, guiding and sharing my teaching expertise. As Spencer (2004) pointed out, mentoring helps build “a relationship that gives people the opportunity to share their professional and personal skills and experiences and to grow and develop in the process.” At the time, most of the centers I worked at did not have a formal mentoring program in place. There was only a buddy system that gave new teachers one-off advice when needed. When I joined as assistant principal, I found that there was no real mentoring plan. The other teachers informed me that there were few teachers who served as mentors to the new teacher. However, they also faced challenges as most of them had less than five years of experience. This resulted in a dilemma on how to “mentor” the newly joined teachers, furthermore with minimal guidance from the principal. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Participating in this module and examining the benefits of this mentoring process was eye-opening and empowering for me to reflect on myself as a leader. What can I do to guide these teachers who are trying to fulfill their duty as early childhood educators? I have a few teachers who are currently pursuing their early childhood degree and they need support. They have recently changed careers, causing a shortage of experienced teachers who can supervise. I have witnessed how difficult it is for them to manage children due to lack of experience. One said that during her first year, she was upset, lost, and even wanted to quit and return to her old job. Fortunately, I came to guide her, which helped her regain her confidence and decide to continue her journey as an early childhood educator. Mentoring helps beginning teachers reduce their stress and anxiety, which helps them to be positive, secure and confident in their respective work environment. The main challenges in adopting an established mentoring program are the shortage of experienced mentors, caused by the inability of centers to retain good faculty. This happened when one of my novice teachers decided to return to her old job as a nurse because she felt overwhelmed by the daily responsibilities and expectations of the center and parents as an early childhood educator . Looking at this question, I felt like I had failed as a leader because I couldn't convince her to stay. It was a waste of talent because she already had mentoring (even if it wasn't a full mentoring program). Every teacher who leaves the industry is considered a financial loss as this includes tuition grants, recruitment, training of teachers before they leave and the employment of foreign teachers. As part of my efforts to implement the mentoring program, I still struggle with overwhelming tasks of mentoring newly joined staff and novice teachers. I then realized that time was the main factor. Meetings and communication face-to-face, in reflective journals, or in journals are essential in mentoring relationships. My role in.