The Relationship Between Effective Mentoring and School Leadership

What were the speakers’ main messages?

There is a positive correlation between mentoring and school leadership, and leaders can benefit from aligning NAESP principal standards with NAESP school leadership mentor competencies. There are eight clear steps to implementing a mentoring system. 

What was the speaker’s best quote?

“Leadership is service, not position.”

What were the top ideas from the session?

• Know your leadership identity.
• There are four types of protege mindsets:
  • Fire: The person is on fire to get thing done, create results, and actualize goals; 
  • Air: The person is expansive, ha lots of ideas, may have many unfinished projects, and may present as overwhelmed; 
  • Earth: This person may not have a not a lot of ideas, and will have strong energy and direction; 
  • Water: This person is focused on emotion, both their own and others (Mark and Magail Peysha, 2018)
• There are eight mentoring steps:
  • Understand and be understood
  • Adjust and readjust
  • Listen and speak with respect
  • Transmit creativity, connectivity, and composition
  • Understand mentor and protege have strengths and weaknesses
  • Build relationships for community and collaboration
  • Find humor
  • Leave a legacy

What is one idea you want to learn more about?

Project Implicit: Looks at bias and disparities. Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people might be unwilling or unable to report. 

What are some relevant or surprising stats you learned?

• From Wallace Foundation (2021): The impact of principals on schools and students. Principals must develop an equity lens, particularly as they are called on to meet the needs of growing numbers of marginalized students.
• Effective principals are not equitably distributed across schools.
• Principles are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, but representation gaps with students are growing in regard to principal diversity. 
• New York Leadership Academy. Free resources
• Learning Forward, 2022 leadership standards

Notes by Tiffany L. Rehbein, principal of Bain Elementary School in Cheyenne, Wyoming.