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. Consider:

• capability – is this a leadership development opportunity for a middle leader? Consider upskilling middle leaders.
• compatibility – is the mentor a good match for your graduate teacher? Consider a mentor in the same team as the graduate or who has experience in that part of the school.
• capacity – does the mentor have other significant roles in your school that may impact on their capacity to support the graduate teacher? Are there others who could fill this role?

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 large staffing profile that allows for a high degree of flexibility in facilitating backfill.
• One-to-many – one mentor will support multiple graduate teachers through the program. This approach may be preferable for schools that do not have enough experienced teachers available to resource a one-to-one model.