Mentoring - the Cinderella profession?

Let’s take the fairytale of Cinderella first.  Teacher mentoring in English schools could be said to have finally gone to the ball.  It has found a place at the table by being a fundamental feature of the Early Career Framework. Mentors are being trained to be part of the infrastructure of consolidating the professional learning required of Early Career Teachers. Like Cinderella, mentors have been whisked into the limelight.

It wasn’t always like this. Mentoring has been a core feature of initial teacher training and education (ITTE) for a generation. Mentors’ work has been framed through individual ITTE partnership agreements and been scrutinised through the national inspection processes as such. As teachers’ lives have got ever busier in schools their capacity to mentor has been stretched. But mentoring went on, and often it was unrewarded.

In Cinderella terms the working lives of mentors were often in the shadows; enacted at the end of the school day, tucked into corners of staffrooms, with time lost from mentoring when other school activities took priority. Mentors grapple with their own multiple roles in school and beyond – as do mentees (are they novice teachers at the beck and call of the timetable they have been allocated to teach or are they student teachers whose own learning needs must be considered?). Mentoring is often conducted under the gaze and direction of others – who may not be the Ugly Sisters but who steer the agenda and timescale.

Alongside the hard work of mentoring there are benefits. Knowing your work has value is important. Like Cinderella, mentors can also see the fruits of their labours – as student teachers gain confidence and competence. Just as Cinderella (in the fairytale) has a friend in Buttons, mentors also build relationships with their mentees and in mentoring communities.  These relationships are part of the positive reinforcement which help mentors develop confidence and self-esteem.

Back to the fairytale – Cinderella receives an invitation to the ball. Mentors are asked to be part of the shiny new ECF initiative. A fairy godmother is on hand to turn a pumpkin into a carriage and rags turn to a gown.  The glass slippers go on.  The ECF furnishes mentors with training, a framework to follow and provides funding to release time for mentoring (although strangely not upfront funding) and the potential for a happy ending is established. At the ball Cinderella meets her Prince Charming and they dance the night away.  Until midnight strikes…. Cinderella flees, her gown and carriage disappear, and she loses one glass slipper.
We know how the fairytale ends.  Prince Charming now takes centre stage. He hunts his kingdom in search of the woman he fell for, taking the lost glass slipper to ease her foot into. Despite the protestations of the Ugly Sisters Cinderella is finally presented to him and the shoe fits. The happy ending is in sight.  A marriage made in heaven (or at least in fantasy land). But is it? Could Cinderella lose some of her identity in her new status? As a princess does she ever miss the pleasures and small freedoms in her early life? As mentoring is swept into the policy arena of the ECF is anything awry? Is there a risk that the essence of mentoring might be obscured by the dominance of the ECF structure? Has our attention been drawn to another protagonist (like it was to Prince Charming) – have our mentors become ancillary trainers and a version of instructional coaches? Has the fairytale ending offered by the ECF captured the early career teachers and their mentors and set them free to be empowered within the profession? Are they telling their own stories, or have they conceded their nuanced and unique roles to the authors of the ECF?

Cinderella is best known as a fairytale or a cinematic representation of it. But it has deeper origins in oral storytelling traditions that spanned generations and continents. So, let us take our attention to this element. Firstly, we can acknowledge that much of this storytelling tradition is gendered, with women passing on the traditional stories (such as Cinderella). Mentoring too has often been gendered, in some settings it has been seen as part of domestic work of schools, not occupying leadership spaces, drawing out and nurturing younger generations of teachers.

Secondly, we recognise the value of this storytelling tradition. It might seem simply a form of entertainment, but actually these stories were evocative narratives used to pass on wisdom. Stories are powerful in enabling learning. So this pre-fairytale perspective on Cinderella is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on mentoring. Do our mentors hold the space for the narratives of teaching? Does mentoring create opportunities to discuss educational values and practices that span generations and underpin the profession (enlightenment beyond the grip of current policy context)? Are the traditional narratives if teaching used formatively and interwoven with contemporary understanding?

And is mentoring nuanced and enriched by context - like the best crafted stories?  Do new teachers find themselves in these stories and understand how they relate to the others who dwell there?  What is revealed in their plots, their settings, the characters that are found there and the dilemmas they face? Does our mentoring allow incursions into new spaces, help build our imagination of what might be possible, encourage us to explore other stories, read and co-construct sequels just as the best storytelling does? If it does then our mentor do more than pass on wisdom, they also unlock the future.