Andragogy & Mentorship 

Studying adult learning styles, andragogy, has helped me to further develop my leadership skills and provide me with the theoretical knowledge about how adults learn. Taking this knowledge and applying it to my leadership style, and more practically, incorporating it into interactions with teachers and other colleagues will help me to become a better leader. This exercise provided me with a variety of tools to employ and helped me to think critically about how I can incorporate these strategies. Looking back on my experiences with leaders, I’ve come to see how using these strategies has led to successful leadership, and how employing these strategies could have helped to solve some difficulties that have arisen. For example, staff members are not always motivated to study the professional development book chosen by administration. The reason is that staff don’t view this book as relevant to their teaching and were not consulted about their development needs and interests.

Supporting new teachers is an important aspect in promoting their success and retention. The Ministry of Education provides many resources for schools about New Teacher Induction Programs (NTIP). One of the assignments for this module was to outline how I could support our school’s NTIP initiatives and mentor new teachers. This assignment helped me examine and draw on my own experiences as a new teacher. Researching best practices for mentors helped me to develop tools and strategies for connecting with and supporting new teachers. I also had the opportunity to develop some practical resources that our school could use to help support new teachers and their mentors.