I am Elaine Goulding, and have been a primary school teacher for 35 years. I came to formal mentoring more than ten years ago as part of the university training for a student undertaking a Post Graduate Certificate of Education course. I have subsequently mentored Bachelor of Education students, newly-qualified teachers, teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants – all formal, rigorous processes.

Why I was given the original mentoring role, I believed at the time, was because I was very experienced as a teacher, very mature in terms of life skills, and very keen to take on the role.  Reflecting on this, I think it was more than that, that I had mentoring qualities from an early age. From about 10 years of age I would help the children on our council estate with reading and writing, fashion, and ran a Brownies-style club in our back garden!

What is a mentor?

I was recently attracted to join a Masters in Education course at my local university because it offered a module to do with mentoring, so I began to study the theory. Traditionally, the role of the mentor is the one-way process of the master imparting his knowledge and skills to the young apprentice (in Education it was usually an older male ‘master’ and a young female ‘apprentice’), or the benign wise man of legend such as Yoda or Gandalf guiding the way on a journey wrought with pitfalls and dangers. Now mentors in education are more likely to be female, older, in an advisory, supportive, nurturing role, drawing on coaching and counselling skills. Interestingly, the age gap is often about half way between that of mother and daughter, about twelve years (an ‘aunty’ figure?). My experience of mentoring, therefore, differed significantly from the traditional model.
In my various roles I met regularly with the mentee (I only ever mentored one person at a time, which is what is recommended). I observed and helped with their lessons, provided a teaching role model, completed paperwork and reported back to their standards inspector, basically scaffolding the gradual transition into their new role.
It was, however, the less-formal weekly progress meetings which provided the most invaluable support, I feel. This was when the mentees expressed their concerns and self-doubts about their ability to move forward in their lives. In all but one case the mentees were mature women striving to ‘better themselves’. Most had been underachievers in education, in a relationship and beginning a family early.

Mentoring as Sharing Experiences

As part of my mentoring course, I undertook some research about how mentees felt about their experience of the mentoring programme. I interviewed a number of women who overwhelmingly said that they felt that they were grateful for the emotional support they received whilst training, how their confidence had grown because of this. They said that they felt stronger and more in control, not only in their career, but in their lives in general. Almost all said that having a male mentor would have been different because a female mentor would have had similar experiences to themselves and be more empathetic about the work-life balance.
During our weekly meetings, if the mentee as ‘reflective practitioner’ voiced her self doubts, I would refer to similar times in the past when I had felt the same. Undoubtedly the mentoring process was good for me, too. In the course of it not only did I reflect on my own professional practice, as well as personal issues, but also learned a lot from each individual mentee. I was not afraid to ask for their help too, from ideas about teaching resources to help with ICT. It was definitely a two-way process.

Challenges for Women

There are specific obstacles facing women within the mentoring process, though. An unexpected outcome I discovered was that a high percentage of the women I knew as mentees had relationship breakdowns during the time of their study, or shortly after. They explained that their male partners didn’t like the change, or felt neglected, or were jealous of their career development, or didn’t feel so needed, as a result of this process of self-development of which mentoring played a part. Evidently, some women have to pay a price for choosing to progress their career!