Headmasters as Mentors
What is mentoring?
We want to serve municipal educational administration, schools and day care centers in improving management and well-being at work.
History
Headmaster Seppo Ryösä started to build up Headmaster Mentoring Method spring 2016 when he was coaching headmasters in city of Vaasa. Ryösä discovered right away that the need for mentoring was great. Ryösä mentored also two headmasters in Turku 2019
The Headmaster Mentoring Method 2.0 was built during 2019-2020 as one objective of the BestSchool Finland Proper -project (National Board of Education and #Paraskoulu approved the project funding to nine cities: Sauvo, Parainen, Paimio, Kaarina, Lieto, Raisio, Naantali, Mynämäki and Uusikaupunki)). Ryösä was no more working alone, but headmasters Anne Alho, Timo Kalske, Hannu Toukola, Timo Tuusvuori and Jyrki Välimäki joined the team. The team is still looking forward getting a head of a day care center to join in!
The team meets once a month to get and give support to each other. It has also two mentors of it’s own to ensure the quality of the mentoring process. Doctor of Philosophy Mr Timo Kultanen from Naantali Finland and Headmaster and Mentor Mr William Griffiths from Leicester UK have met the mentor group regularly to coach and discuss about mentoring and the process.
The team has mentored more than 20 schools and day care centers by the end of 2020.
Mentor team applied February 2020 funding from the National Board of Education for spreading mentoring widely. This time the funding was not approved, but new application next year…
Mentoring Method
The crucial meaning, support and improving of running the school or day care center have been understood to be one of the main objectives in the Best School project.
Method briefly
In the Headmaster Mentor Method recently retired and highly experienced headmasters mentor and ’walk side by side’ with basic education headmasters and day care center heads.
Director of Education wants to offer mentoring to heads. Heads both want to get mentoring and improve as a head and get mentoring also for the staff.
The process starts with mentor-director of education meeting. After this meeting the mentor knows the ’city’s’ expectations and has the basic picture of the situation in the school/day care center. Now the mentor can start to plan the mentoring process.
The next meeting is for the head and making the ’final’ plans of metoring process in this school/day care center. Mentor hopes that the head agrees the idea of mentor having discussions with each individual of the staff. Mentor also spends some time in the unit to get the idea of the work atmosphere and work life.
- Mentor goes through the main parts of the staff discussions in the staff meeting
- Mentor supports the head and the staff on the way to make their dream gome true.
The dream got real during the discussions with the head and the staff.
The active part of ther mentoring process ends in the evaluation discussion with the head, the director of education and the mentor. Mentor is available also after this meeting, if the head and the staff need.
The feedback of the Mentoring Method has been great!
Contact us
If you want to know more, do not hesitate to contact Seppo Ryösä, seppo (a) rexitmentoroi.fi or +358 40 5818587
