To help you prepare for your new role as a mentor, we’ve collated some helpful tips provided by our current/previous mentors who have a wealth of experience and who have also been in your shoes!

Top tips:

• Prioritise upcoming commitments in school to fully support the ECT
• Make sure you get the team to support the ECT’s and to prepare for the sessions - Good luck, you will be brilliant!!
• Make sure you have time to pop in and see them.
• Try to not be in the same year group.
• Be confident in asking for time to prepare your sessions and do your prep work.
• Give your ECT a reflections diary and ask them to record something that went well and something they found tricky, each week.
• Have the confidence to prioritise school-based tasks / learning for your ECT e.g. deep dives, planning, parents evening etc. 
• Ask your school to give you some time prior to each session so you can read and prepare.
• Enjoy building a relationship with your ECT – Good luck!!
• Always be approachable. 
• Building the relationship is so important.
• Listen
• Be patient.
• Schedule in time to ‘pop in’ to ECT’s class in an informal manner as it’s unlikely to happen otherwise.
• Make some time in each session to prioritise the day-to-day school essentials – don’t let the modules take over!!
• At the start of my mentoring journey, I wish I had known how much reading there is to do!!  I would advise you to be flexible, encouraging, and positive about teaching as a career – Happy Mentoring!!
• Set boundaries as to when your ECT can see you outside of the monitoring time.  Do this with care and in a supportive way but do it to preserve your sanity and manage your workload too.
• Take up/increase your Yoga sessions!!
• Get onto the website as soon as possible – bookmark the thing!!
• Create your own pro-forma to record discussions, meetings and include additional mentoring sessions.
• Acknowledge and enjoy the fresh approach this brings.
• There will never be enough time! Make sure you plan carefully for the meetings – they still won’t always go according to plan.
• Take time to listen to the immediate needs of your ECT.
• Dear mentor, I wish I’d known you’ll never have enough time to do a good job, even when you’re doing well.
• Fight for your time with your ECT!!  Spend it however you both need.
• Dear mentor, from the start…..appreciate the time this role requires to do well, your school may not!!  Be accommodating with allocating your time to do things properly.
• To be successful, always make yourself available to your ECT.  They need to know you genuinely have their back!! Back it up in the way you act.
• Ask questions and gain a clear understanding on the course.
• Don’t apply too much pressure.  Redirect energy towards meaningful impact.
• Mentoring is time consuming but very rewarding – you don’t have to be perfect!!
• Make sure you allow time to prepare for your mentor sessions.
• Really familiarise yourself with the ECF website.
• Dear mentor, please appreciate the time that this role requires – make sure that you get the time you should, to do the role efficiently.
• Don’t beat yourself up if you feel you have not given yourself fully to the ECT.  You can only do what you can do in the time you have.
• Get to know your blocks – be a step ahead.
• Be a friend as well as a mentor.