Mentors, class teachers and education practitioners play a pivotal role within the University of Greenwich ITE Partnership and are responsible for overseeing the day to day training, development and pastoral care of students during professional placements.
The final report National Standards for school-based initial teacher training (ITT) mentors (DFE 2016) defines a mentor as "… a suitably-experienced teacher who has formal responsibility to work collaboratively within the ITT partnership to help ensure the trainee receives the highest-quality training". At the University of Greenwich we have extended this definition to encompass all practitioners with appropriate professional status who are supporting our trainees working towards EYTS, QTS and QTLS.
We feel it is important to support the continuing professional development of our mentors and have devised an accreditation process that recognises mentors' expertise.
In this section you will find:
- our cross-phase mentoring principles
- self-directed mentor training modules linked to the National Standards
- the mentor recognition FAQs and application form
We are holding a number of extra training sessions in order for settings to begin to prepare for trainee placement mentoring during the current academic year. We use an instructional coaching approach through a three-staged process, "I do", "We do", "You do". Please encourage potential new mentors or those who may need to refresh to attend one of our training sessions. For those mentors who have recently completed Stage 1 in their phase, please join us for one of the Stage 2 mentor training dates.
Stage 1 sessions are arranged with relevant programme/Mentor lead. If you require further Stage 1 training please contact your relevant lead. For those who have completed Stage 1, please ensure you sign up for Stage 2 which is cross phase. This deals in depth with difficult situations and how we might support weaker trainees. We also look more closely at target setting and how we might also support other mentors/colleagues.
If you have completed Stage 1 in any phase you are highly recommended to come and complete Stage 2 (details below). You need to complete stages 1 & 2 before moving onto Stage 3 Mentor Acreditation Scheme (Early Years and FESS or NPQLTD Primary and Secondar)
Please contact Ambia Bagum at the following email addresses for your phase with the date you would like to attend, name and email so we can have a record of attendees and send out relevant documentation.
Primary: Primaryplacements@gre.ac.uk
Secondary: Secondaryplacements@gre.ac.uk
Further Education: FESSplacements@gre.ac.uk
Early Years: earlyyears@gre.ac.uk