Human Resources (HR) leaders know that a good mentor can transform a career. But though in theory, anyone can find a mentor, not everyone has equal access to people who can fulfill that role. A deliberate approach to creating mentoring programs—even very simple ones—can help increase the number of opportunities for connections and distribute them more equitably.

Many HR directors encourage staff to enter into mentoring relationships. However, encouraging these relationships without providing structured opportunities to engage in them can actually perpetuate disparities in access. Let’s look at how this can happen and what can be done to help correct it.

There are numerous ways that new teachers can find a mentor. It can be helpful to think of them on a spectrum from organic to institutionally structured because it allows us to see more clearly the ways in which administrators can and should increase access to these opportunities.

Organic Mentoring

Organic mentoring relationships are driven by individuals’ initiative. For instance, many people find a mentor through first- or second-degree connections in their networks just by connecting with others. These connections can be made by chance, or someone can actively seek out support. For instance, a mentor can be found in:

• Friends and family

• A former teacher, instructor, administrator, etc.

• Someone in your alumni network

• A colleague you worked with in the past

• A connection through a professional organization or association

• Social networks

• Acquaintances from other communities of interest

Institutionally Structured Mentoring

Institutions can actively support the development of mentoring relationships through a variety of programming. People can develop and maintain relationships with mentors that have been assigned through formal programs such as:

• Host teacher for a practicum placement

• Host teacher for the student teacher placement

• Assigned novice mentor (first two years)

• Coach or other assigned central office support staff

Additionally, there are other ways that institutions can support mentoring beyond these traditional examples that can help create more access and promote equity.

Shawn and Alex: A Hypothetical Example of Disparities in Access

Let’s take the example of two teachers both in their third year of teaching. We will call them Shawn and Alex. You can easily run this thought experiment for novice teachers or for veteran teachers considering becoming a school leader.

Shawn is an extrovert. Coming from a family of educators, Shawn always wanted to be a teacher, attended a large university, and majored in education. They got their elementary credential from a credentialing program that places 75 candidates in 5 districts annually. Shawn currently teaches 4th grade in a school with a lot of experienced teachers.

Alex is an introvert. First in their family to attend college, they attended a small college majoring in math in another state and got their credential from an equally small, local prep program. Alex teaches the upper-level math class in a high school that has typically been hard to staff and has a high percentage of novice teachers. Only one teacher in the math department has more experience than Alex and that teacher is stressed and struggling.

If we think through these examples while keeping Shawn and Alex in mind, it is clear that Shawn will have many more opportunities to find a mentor organically than Alex will. Not only does Shawn have a larger network (friends, family, classmates, alumni network) there are also more 4th-grade teachers in the district than high school math teachers. Moreover, as an extrovert, Shawn thrives on chatting with numerous people, whereas Alex really needs quiet time to recharge from a day in the classroom with over 100 different students.

This doesn’t mean that Alex can’t find a mentor, or that Shawn definitely will; however, we can see that they won’t have equal access to opportunities and resources.

Use Structure to Increase Access and Promote Equity

There are often opportunities to improve existing mentoring programs to accomplish this.

1. Expand the pools of available, qualified mentors

Many programs ask the same small group of mentors to serve year after year. If mentors are extensively trained and screened, returning to the same folks year after year can appear to reduce costs and ensure that the mentors will be high quality; however, often the main obstacle to increasing the pool is logistical. It can be challenging to get the word out, get mentors approved by their school leaders, and organize them into appropriate pools for matching. But the benefits of a deeper pool are numerous:

• With a good matching mechanism and a deeper pool, you are more likely to make good matches between a mentee’s needs and a mentor’s expertise

• If not matched formally in every instance, each mentor is more likely to have time to continue a relationship with their mentees once the formal mentoring is completed

• Offers more opportunities to grow good mentors who can also be available for “organic” matches

2. Gather more information about what mentors have to offer and what mentees are seeking

• Look at grade levels and subject areas

• Connect people based on curriculum and instructional approaches

• Understand particular strengths and growth areas

3. Provide basic materials that can help set up mentors and mentees for success. This can be “training” but can also be done effectively with limited resources.

• Clear expectations for frequency, format, etc. for in-person or virtual meetings

• Suggested prework, conversation prompts, or guidelines for sessions

There are also opportunities to build new programming that can expand opportunities to mentor and be mentored.

1. Extend Opportunities to More People

Connect people who are interested in mentoring who aren’t eligible for existing programs. For instance, Shawn and Alex as proficient 3rd- year teachers won’t be part of most novice programming and don’t require remediation but may still really benefit from additional support.

2. Create More Opportunities for Connections

Light-touch, short-term mentoring programs or “micro-mentoring” (for free resources, visit: torace.com/resource/micro-mentoring) can focus on a particular skill, subject area, etc., and last anywhere from 1 to 3 sessions. These have many benefits:

• Participating in several of these may create a lasting mentoring relationship between one of the pairs

• They establish connections across sites, grade levels, etc. and build community and increase the chances for everyone to make second-degree connections even those not directly participating in the program

• Sharing knowledge across sites is often more challenging, and these connections can help accelerate the spread of innovative ideas and best practices

• Focused programs can help bring attention to district priorities (for instance, mentoring focused on new technology, on SEL, or on restorative justice)

• Focused topics can open up the opportunity for people with specific training and expertise to be mentors and leverage their skills and gain leadership experience, even if they are not ready to host a student teacher or mentor a struggling novice.

The size, strength, and depth of an individual’s professional network can depend on many factors outside of their control. Approaches to organic mentoring that focus on encouraging individuals to reach out, network, etc., can further entrench structural inequity rather than remedy it. Let’s just imagine that we strongly encourage Shawn and Alex to network and find a mentor. With this encouragement, Alex will put in a lot of effort to become a little more connected but Shawn, the already well-connected person, will more effortlessly become a lot more connected, increasing the size of the opportunity gap between the two rather than narrowing it. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t encourage people to reach out, but rather that it is imperative as administrators we provide structures to support those who need them so that those gaps shrink rather than widen.

Expanding access to opportunities is one of Torace’s core beliefs and our platform can help manage the logistics of both formal and informal mentor matching to drive your diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Visit us at www.torace.com or email [email protected] for more information.