Mentor Mentee Program

Mentors

What Do Mentors Do? 

Mentors provide valuable collaborative experiences for colleagues that are new to Saint Paul Public Schools in order to ensure all educators are equipped with the tools and mindset to equitably support the diverse needs of our community.

Mentoring is...

Mentoring is a community of leaders and learners dedicated to deepening their understanding of self and cultivating their leadership abilities. They are advocates for new educators, students, and families. Mentors are guided by their core values and collaborate with other mentors from across the district through professional learning opportunities afforded throughout the school year.

Mentoring is NOT...

Mentoring is not a way to enforce a program. Mentoring should never be used as enforcers, reporters, or evaluators. This approach has many negative implications.

Mentoring is not a tool for fixing people. It is not something you should do with or to ineffective educators. It is not a box to be checked so that a district can move toward disciplinary measures. [Mentoring] won't be effective if the client doesn't want to engage in it. We can't force people to learn. (Elena Aguilar, Art of Coaching, 2013)

SPPS Preferred Mentor Qualifications

• Tenured in Saint Paul Public Schools and no improvement plan within the last 3 years
• Principal recommendation
• Available to provide mentoring support outside of the contracted school day
• Experience with grade level or content/professional area of the mentee
• Commitment to racial and gender equity development
• Knowledge of content/professional best practices and district initiatives
• Ability to positively build relationships with others
• Experience with adult learners
• Effective communicator
• Experience with collecting and analyzing data and modifying practices to meet the needs of all students

Mentor Selection Criteria

Personal and Professional Dispositions

• Demonstrates commitment to own professional growth and learning
• Eager to support a new colleague
• Communicates openly, honestly, and sensitively with students, staff, and families
• Encourages and nurtures an appreciation of diversity
• Is friendly, approachable, and accessible
• Is enthusiastic and optimistic
• Is dependable and trustworthy
• Demonstrates a patient, helpful, and caring attitude
• Models reflective practices

Mentoring Knowledge and Skills

• Understands adult learning theory and development of professional practices
• Knows how to analyze practices based on criteria of professional standards
• Understands the reciprocal relationships among educational theory, research, and practices
• Uses an inquiry approach for problem solving
• Uses a continuous improvement, professional growth model

Instructional/Professional Skills

• Demonstrates solid content/professional knowledge
• Considers diverse learner needs to personalize and differentiate practices to promote achievement for all learners
• Creates and manages a productive learning environment
• Demonstrates a broad repertoire of instructional/professional practices
• Assesses learning and modifies practices to meet learner needs

Adapted from MN Induction Guidelines Teacher Support Partnership (TSP)

Welcome to Saint Paul Public Schools! Through the Mentor Mentee Program, we hope to provide systems of support for our educators as they embark on the journey of educating St. Paul's children and developing themselves as educators.

The Mentor Mentee Program is individualized, differentiated and flexible to meet professional growth goals for educators just entering the field of education or those coming to Saint Paul Public Schools with previous experience.

• Most probationary educators participate in the Mentor Mentee Program in their first year of employment.
• A full year of mentoring consists of 20 hours of support outside the contracted day. Most mid-year hires will work with a mentor during the year they are hired (10 hours), and support will carry over into the next school year (10 hours). Throughout the course of the school year, mentees will engage in:

1. Goal setting to determine differentiated mentoring support.
2. Differentiated mentoring activities based upon mentee goals.
3. Reflections regarding collaborative work with mentors and professional growth.

Other than fulfilling the mentoring hours, the only requirement of mentees is to complete the Mentee Reflection at the end of each semester. The hours are intended to be spent reflecting on your practice, your beliefs, and your emotions. Separate from the Mentor Mentee Program, you can find the list of courses and requirements for new educators on the Educator Support Pathway page.

Appreciative Conversation

• Use this conversation to get to know one another and begin to build trust. This tool should be used in the first week of the mentoring partnership. It does not need to submit it but you will be asked to share what you learned about one another at the end-of-semester Collaboration Report that will be submitted.

Core Values

• This should be completed as early as possible in the mentoring relationship and will guide mentoring conversations throughout the school year. Rather than explaining how to "do" the role, mentors should guide mentees to live out their core values and use them to guide decision making.

• How:

1. Read through the list of values: Bright Morning - List of Core Values. Write down 10 that you feel are most important to you. Take three minutes.

2. Narrow those ten values down to a list of five that you feel are most important. Take another 2 minutes.

3. Now, from your list of five values, cross off two, leaving you with the three values that are most important to you. These are your core values.

Wheel of Privilege and Power

• Reflecting on our identities and the identities of those we serve can open up new perspectives. Exploring power and privilege can help develop the system-level understanding necessary to make lasting impacts on the learners and families we serve.

The Gaps Framework

• This tool is used when there is a gap between a desired outcome and reality. It can be used by the mentor to help the mentee investigate their own gaps or for the mentee to investigate challenges in their classroom or practice.

Focal Student Protocol

• If a mentee is not sure how to serve a certain student or maybe a group of students, digging into a "focal student" can help learn more about a student. Choosing a particular student to learn more about can build empathy, new skills, and lead to improved outcomes for an even larger group of students! 

Analyzing Student Learning Protocol

• A simple tool that can be adapted to disaggregate student learning outcomes in order to learn about patterns that may exist in your own school or classroom. Investigating these patterns may be opportunities to change one's practice or highlight the need for more differentiate and support for certain students or groups.

SPPS Mentoring Framework - Full List of Tools and Resources

• Use this link to see a continually growing list of resources for mentors that are organized by the elements of the mentoring framework.

Fall 2025 Documentation - For full year mentors and half-year fall mentors. Due December 5, 2025:

• Fall Collaboration Report (Mentor and Mentee)
• Fall Mentee Reflection (Mentee Only)
• Fall Mentor Self-Assessment (Mentor Only)

Spring 2026 Documentation - For full year mentors and half-year spring mentors: Due May 15, 2026

• Spring Collaboration Report (Mentor and Mentee)
• Spring Mentee Reflection (Mentee Only)
• Spring Mentor Self-Assessment (Mentor Only)