Career Start

Mentor selection

Schools must designate a suitable mentor for every graduate teacher. Effective mentor selection is important and will ensure the graduate teacher can fully benefit from the Career Start program. Schools must consider:

• capability – is this a leadership development opportunity for an emerging leader? Being a Career Start mentor is an opportunity to leverage experience and be provided with support to build capability. This may be a pathway to middle leadership opportunities. Mentors of all experience levels require a commitment to continuous learning and development to be effective
• compatibility – is the mentor a good match for the graduate teacher? Mentorship is a relationship that must be built on a foundation of trust and equity. Consider a mentor in the same team as the graduate, who has experience in that part of the school or might have similar or relatable experiences. Mentors need to be actively teaching to ensure that graduate teachers can observe their mentor in the classroom
• capacity – does the mentor have other significant roles in the school that may impact on their capacity to support the graduate teacher? The mentor should have time for deliberate, regular and protected meetings.

Avoid selecting mentors whose position may impact a graduate’s ability to engage openly in discussions around their practice or challenges they may experience throughout their year.

Mentorship models

• One-to-one – this is a model which allocates a single mentor to a single graduate teacher. One-to-one is a model suitable for schools with a staffing profile that can facilitate the appropriate time release backfill.
• One-to-many – one mentor will support multiple graduate teachers through the program. This approach may be necessary for schools that do not have enough experienced teachers available to resource a one-to-one model. If adopting this model, consider that graduates may feel as though they are being compared to one another. Separately connecting graduates with a one-to-one buddy who is not supporting other graduate teachers may assist with this.