Mentor Forum

Mentors play a crucial role in sustaining and supporting teachers’ professional growth with the focus on increasing students' learning and well being. 

Mentor Forums support mentors by providing an opportunity to learn from national and local experts, engage in peer-to-peer reflection, and establish solutions for common problems of practice. This year's forums feature the following speakers:

• November 19, 2024: Mentoring Through the Eyes of an Early Career Teacher with Patrick Harris, author of The First Five: A Love Letter to Teachers

• January 28, 2025: How to Ask Questions That Encourage Mentees to See Their Strengths and Gifts with Sarah Brown Wessling, 2010 National Teacher of the Year
  
  

• March 25, 2025: Reflections of Building a Mentoring and Teacher Well-Being Program with Rebecka Peterson, 2023 National Teacher of the Year
  
  

At each forum, mentors will engage in meaningful discussions around current problems of practices with other mentors across the state in order to foster collective solutions to challenges facing students, teachers, and mentors. 

Mentors will strategize solutions-facing action that will help support student and teacher growth by sharing their expertise with one another. Mentor Forums are a professional learning environment where mentors can reflect on their own practice with support from colleagues. 

These forums allow mentors the opportunity to enter into problem-solving dialogue so that they can best assist the newest members of the profession. Each Mentor Forum event is uniquely designed and tailored to provide current research and relevant topics directly related to the practice of mentoring.

Participants will:

• Reflect on the impact of mentorship on student learning and teacher effectiveness.
• Name current problems of practice and design solutions to support student learning.
• Engage in community building through sharing practice and mutual support.