Last week the second Mentoring Meeting of the school year was held in the Western Region for all teachers, head teachers and Ghana Education Service (GES) Officers taking part on the Fast-Track Transformational Teacher Training (FTTT) Programme. These meetings enable the participants to deepen their understanding of their mentoring roles and so become better mentors.
The main focus of this second Mentoring Meeting was on the mentoring relationship between the classroom teachers and their mentees, the student teachers from Holy Child College of Education. The teachers mentoring skills are essential for preparing the student teachers to be able to implement the FTTT programme in their own classrooms once they are qualified teachers.
Other important roles that this meeting focused on were the mentoring relationships between the head teachers and all of the adults in the classroom and the relationships between GES officers and their mentees, the head teachers and teachers.
After discussing aspects of mentoring and sharing ideas and experiences, the meeting participants developed their mentoring skills – and had fun – while role-playing different mentoring scenarios. For example, teachers had to role-play what mentoring conversation they would have with their mentee if they overheard her speaking rudely to the teaching assistant or if they did not understand an aspect of the programme how would they ask their mentee for help.
The participants felt that the meeting confirmed the FTTT mantra ‘ I am a learner, you are a learner, we are all learners’, especially when they experienced the poignancy of a mentor humbly asking their mentee to help their understanding of how to implement something in their classroom. Aside from this scenario, many examples of generous working practices were shared, such as mentees subtly helping mentors to correct mistakes they had made in their teaching without the children noticing.
This meeting enabled the participants to share their mentoring ideas and experiences as well as increasing their own understanding and skills. A good mentoring relationship is crucial for the successful implementation of the programme and all of the participants took away good ideas as to how to maintain these good relationships in the classroom.
