Personal Narrative: My Role As A Mentor

First year teachers come with lots of worries and concerns to the new working environment. No matter how well trained them or what degrees they obtained. Being in the practical/real experience is a complete different scenario. They need a kind extended hand to take them through this first year with clear, easy steps and guide them through their job requirements, until they feel confident enough and are off on "their own". Our role as mentors and leaders is to provide that guidance and support with an open heart and lots of patience to the different areas of need. We have to be committed to doing that and giving constructive feedback that will help this fresh teacher learn and grow. We have to be very patient again and accept that this new teacher lacks experience and hold his/her hand through this journey. We have to model classroom strategies and how planning is done over and over again till they grasp it and
feel confidant. We have to also model that we ourselves are life-long learners and that we are happy being involved in their journeys. They will have so many moments of being insecure and that is our role to deliver hope and optimism and remind them and ourselves that we all were in their shoes in the beginning of our careers. Only then and after a generous period of time of mentoring a fresh teacher and after making sure that "enough" support and guidance were given, one can think of starting to evaluate based on the enough training one provided.
Mentoring doesn't start until the teacher is actually hired. You also mentioned quite a few times the motivation of the teacher. I think that in our schools, this is a big issue, but again - it really doesn't have anything to do with mentoring.

Mentoring is more guiding the new teacher in the ways of the school.
They may have never taught in a classroom environment before or their own education may have been with a different curriculum - so they need both process support and a feeling of being needed at the school. To help them be the best that they can be - basically to sure up their esteem. Inviting (mandatory or otherwise) them to professional development sessions is a great follow up - but what happens between the time they are hired and the professional development session is held? That's where the mentor comes in. Not to give the entire professional development session - but guidance, tid-bits of information from an experienced teacher. Mentoring can also include offering peer observations with teachers you feel would help the new teacher. have the new teacher sit in the back of the room of another experienced teacher, then as the administrator -sit down and discuss what they saw, what they felt they learned, how they could incorporate some of the strategies observed in their own
classroom.