Teacher mentors and their growing importance in the education world
The Indian education sector is poised for faster pace of growth. Thanks to the growing number of educational institutes and digitization of education, the K-12 segment has recently undergone a sea change. The situation has led to an increase in the demand for a large number of competent teachers. And this is where comes the importance of teacher mentoring programs.
As the name suggests, teacher coaches or mentors help in mentoring new teachers. While mentoring, they acquaint new teachers with various aspects of teaching, such as classroom as well as student management, classroom organization, lesson planning, student behavior, curriculum planning, just to name a few.
Teacher mentors, who are trained in teacher education, are well aware of various issues generally faced by new teachers. Therefore, they can equip new teachers with necessary skills so that they can deal with such issues in their teaching career. Further, during the mentoring program, mentors use different strategies that help in making new teachers feel easy in the classroom.
Responsibilities of new teacher mentors
Generally, the responsibilities of new teacher mentors vary; however, some common ones are as follows:
- Acquainting new teachers with the nitty-gritty of classroom management, curriculum development and lesson planning.
- Enabling new teachers to set their individual teaching objectives and goals.
- Assisting in orienting new teachers to their schools.
- Honing up teaching competency, including managing student behavior.
- Helping teachers in adapting to the school environment and the classroom set-up.
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