F I R S T E V E N T
Welcome to MentorED, the UK’s first and only national conference dedicated to school mentoring.
Saturday 19th March 2022, 9:30AM – 4PM
Saturday, 19th March 2022
9:30AM - 4PM
Manchester Communication Academy
MentorEd offers the opportunity to choose from five different sessions from a range of forty speakers, on a wide variety of different topics. After the welcome and Key Note from Professor Rachel Lofthouse, you will have the opportunity to choose which sessions best fit your professional development priorities, turn up to the talk and leave feeling inspired. There will also be lots of opportunities to network with speakers and other mentors from across all school phases.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor Rachel Lofthouse
Professor of Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University. Director of @CollectivED1. The Centre for Mentoring, Coaching and Professional Learning.
Re-telling mentoring: will Cinderella go to the ball?
Once upon a time, in schools across the land, mentors toiled and laboured like Cinderella. Their effort was often overlooked and unrewarded by the grandees of school leadership and policymakers. Their best work was built around kind and formative relationships with those with even lower profiles.
Once upon a time (not quite so long ago) the DfE waved a policy wand, offering mentors the promise of a new outfit and a spot in the early career limelight. Will Cinderella finally go to the education ball?
The narrative of Cinderella was first told through shared storytelling by women. It was a folk tale that crossed international borders before being documented and reconfigured through the written and media culture. As our story of mentoring unfolds how might its traditions be sustained and what changes might the future hold?
Event itinerary
Choose from five different sessions from a range of forty speakers, on a wide variety of different topics.
WELCOME | 9:30 – 9:45
Welcome and health and safety announcements
Welcome and Keynote from Professor Rachel Lofthouse | 9:45 – 10:30
Once upon a time, in schools across the land, mentors toiled and laboured like Cinderella. Their effort was often overlooked and unrewarded by the grandees of school leadership and policymakers. Their best work was built around kind and formative relationships with those with even lower profiles. Once upon a time (not quite so long ago) the DfE waved a policy wand, offering mentors the promise of a new outfit and a spot in the early career limelight. Will Cinderella finally go to the education ball? The narrative of Cinderella was first told through shared storytelling by women. It was a folk tale that crossed international borders before being documented and reconfigured through the written and media culture. As our story of mentoring unfolds how might its traditions be sustained and what changes might the future hold? “
SESSION 1 | 10:30 – 11:15
Louise Harrison | Mentoring for mid-career teachers
Nicola Arkinstall | How to support your ECT to thrive through high challenge and high support
Kate Allen | Encouraging Growth: Coaching for Success
Lisa Murtagh, Louisa Dawes and Thomas Donnai | The Development of a Reflective Mentoring Framework to support ITT and ECT School-Based Mentors
Lekha Sharma | Facilitating Leaders in their Development
Damon Hesford | The Diagnostic Lesson
Julia Skinner | The Listening Ear
Catherine Vose | The power of practise
Rebecca Tickell | What do teacher mentors need to be able to do in order to be effective? The competencies of effective teacher mentors: Obtaining expert consensus using the Delphi technique
David Weston | Creating the conditions for a coaching culture (VIRTUAL)
BREAK | 11:15 – 11:30
SESSION 2 | 11:30 – 12:15
Debbie Garvey | Mentoring as a Balancing Act: supporting and challenging staff in the EYFS
Ludi Jones | Target setting: one lesson at a time
Matt Dechaine | Can a coach or mentor be authentic and client-led?
Fe Brewer | Moving Towards a Meaningful Mentor Curriculum
Yvonne Jones | Reflections on Instructional Coaching: Pitfalls and how to avoid them
Jon Hutchinson | How can we ensure consistency without imposing uniformity?
Claire Grosvenor | Using Download Listening – how do we help others to understand and reflect upon the self better?
Julie Taylor and Kate Hamer | From Mentor to Coach: The University of Warwick’s ITE instructional coaching journey
Vicki Maguire | We Lead Well: creating resilient leaders through coaching
Sarah Mullin | How to navigate difficult conversations (VIRTUAL)
SESSION 3 | 12:15 – 13:00
Jennifer Croft | Building relationships with those you mentor
Jo McShane | Mentoring: A bridge over the cesspit
Kate Owbridge | What if we invest in them and they leave?” “What if we don’t and they stay?” Mentoring your team onto bigger and better things
Emmanuel Awoyelu and Yamina Bibi | Professional development and its impact on others
Kathryn Morgan | Theories of Action – Professional Growth Conversations
Gary Seal | A mentoring school: Developing a culture of mentoring across a school to support school improvement
Sarah Davies | Developing a dialogue with your trainees
Viki Dobbs | Using Deliberate Practice and Direct Instruction in an Employment-based Route into Teaching Early Years
Jenny Griffiths | TrustED: what makes a successful mentoring relationship?
Emma Shepherd | Visible Role Models: How informal mentoring can empower parent teachers to remain and grow in the profession (VIRTUAL)
LUNCH | 13:00 – 13:45
SESSION 4 | 13:45 – 14:30
Dr Rachel Roberts | Getting the Most Out of Mentor Meetings
Hannah Wilson | Mentoring Diverse Educators
Duncan Partridge | Communication Skills for Mentoring and Coaching
UoS staff member | TBC
Lizzy Swan | Boundaries: The key to health and happiness (and hacks) as a Mentor
Michael Chiles | Coaching Conversations
Neil Mullen | New to Mentoring qualification & its impact on colleagues and learning
Sarah Coady | Prioritising and managing workload
Florence Ukpabi-Okwusogu | Using mentoring to support teacher wellbeing
SESSION 5 | 14:30 – 15:15
Vivienne Porritt | The 3 Cs of Mentoring: Confidence, Collaboration, Challenge
Andy Taylor (Mr T’s NQTS) | Getting the most out of early career teachers
Lisa Fathers | Wellbeing- not a soft option!
Suzanne Preston | How to give effective, specific, directed and motivational feedback to a trainee
Andrew Marlow and Chris Green | Establishing and Professionalising the role or ECT Mentor in our Primary Schools
Kevin Hewitson | Helping teachers manage their time effectively and secure a work/life balance
Stefanie Wilkinson | Coaching and Mentoring Teachers of the Future in FE: A values led approach
Jim Knight | Instructional Coaching for Better Teaching and Learning (VIRTUAL)
CLOSE AND THANKS | 15:15 – 15:30
Speakers
SESSION 1
Mentoring for mid-career teachers
Mentoring opportunities often focus on early career teachers but there are multiple benefits to also implementing opportunities for supporting mid-career teachers (broadly defined as those with 5 – 15 years teaching experience). Research shows that this cohort of staff often cite lack of personalised, relevant CPD as one reason for a lack of satisfaction within their role; mentoring can be one way to tackle this issue and to help boost professional fulfilment and, ultimately, aid retention.
How to support your ECT to thrive through high challenge and high support
Top tips and ideas to support your ECT to thrive. How we can use instructional coaching and other strategies to empower ECT’s. What are the best systems to put in place to ensure the ECT’s move forward in their practice? How can we enable change in habits to ensure quality first teaching? How we can ensure the wellbeing of ECT’s through High Challenge and high support.
Encouraging Growth: Coaching for Success
Education is teaching people how to learn, not dictating what they think. The same applies to training and mentoring teachers. Too often, mentors view their role as one where they judge their trainees based on how they, themselves, would approach a lesson or a task. This session will cover the importance of coaching and questioning when mentoring, giving practical ideas and advice around how to best support trainee teachers and facilitate their pedagogical development.
The Development of a Reflective Mentoring Framework to support ITT and ECT School-Based Mentors
In July 2016, the non-statutory National Standards for school-based initial teacher training (ITT) mentors were published (DfE, 2016). In response to these standards, a working group of school-based mentors and university based tutors (from both primary and Secondary Sectors) at the University of Manchester have been collaborating to develop a ‘Reflective Mentoring Framework’ with the aim of considering the standards from both a theoretical and pragmatic perspective.
Drawing on the work of Hudson (2007), we adopted his five-factor model for mentoring, which included: Personal Attributes, System Requirements, Pedagogical Knowledge, Modelling, and Feedback. In addition to this, we were keen to situate our mentoring framework in a transformative paradigm. Our theoretical framework for this was based on the concept of ‘transformation’. In the first instance, we drew on the ideas of Cochran-Smith and Paris (1995) who noted two approaches to mentoring: knowledge transmission and knowledge transformation. Secondly, we considered Mezirow’s (2009) transformative learning theory, which is defined as a metacognitive epistemology of evidential (instrumental) and dialogical (communicative) reasoning. Drawing on this body of knowledge, we developed a Reflective Framework which we believe has transformative potential for both mentors and mentees alike.
In developing the framework, our aim was to equip mentors with the skills to move from a transmission approach of learning and mentoring towards a transformative approach.
This session presents initial findings of the project, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the potential of the framework to support, in the first instance, mentor development.
Facilitating Leaders in their Development
A session focusing on the importance of ongoing mentors for leaders at all stages.
The Diagnostic Lesson
Why I think getting trainees teaching as soon as possible is the best way forward. I’ll look at what their first lesson might involve, why it might prove useful and how it can result in a more purposeful placement for new and inexperienced teachers. This immersive experience gives trainees the chance to be in front of students, developing their practice, as soon as possible. It also gives schools and mentors an early reference point to inform the rest of the placement.
The Listening Ear
With the stresses that the pandemic has brought to those in education, supporting them has become big business with an explosion of coaching & mentoring opportunities. Many of them espouse a particular coaching model and many are quite expensive.
The Listening Ear was created during the first lockdown to offer a safe space, a listening ear and some blue-sky thinking for anyone who has needed it.
This session will explain what an hour with Julia offers and how a chat is often all you need.
The power of practise
An overview of purposeful practise with ECTs and established teachers
What do teacher mentors need to be able to do in order to be effective? The competencies of effective teacher mentors: Obtaining expert consensus using the Delphi technique
Creating the conditions for a coaching culture
In this session, David Weston will look at how school and trust leaders can create the systems, processes and culture that enable a culture where mentoring and coaching can thrive. Drawing on examples from real schools and from research, he will look at how conversation, collaboration and trust can be built up effectively to help everyone work together effectively.
SESSION 2
Mentoring as a Balancing Act: supporting and challenging staff in the EYFS
An interactive session exploring how the traditional skills and knowledge associated with mentoring and coaching can be used as appropriate ways to support and challenge staff. This session will consider how leaders and managers can encourage, empower and inspire, as well as use evidenced-based information to question, confront issues and develop self-esteem and confidence.
Target setting: one lesson at a time
The session will look into target setting for ITTs and ECTs, exploring how to agree on targets prior to lesson observations and feedback, making them the focus of the observation. I will also look into setting manageable targets that can have a direct impact on overall progress through the teacher standards one lesson at a time.
Can a coach or mentor be authentic and client-led?
A look into the premise of being authentic and values led as a professional whilst maintaining a wholly client-led approach. What happens when there is misalignment between coach and coachee or mentor and mentee? How as coaches and mentors do we check our values and what we bring to sessions? What are the boundaries between coaching and mentoring and how does a coach or mentor work between the disciplines? How does a client-led approach impact on this? Is coaching always coaching if someone needs advice and guidance? What are the skills, knowledge and behaviours which underpin effective coaching and mentoring which enable coaches and mentors to be authentically themselves whilst best serving the person they are working with?
Moving Towards a Meaningful Mentor Curriculum
The story of our SCITT’s journey towards ensuring our trainees receive excellent mentoring by developing their mentors with a consciously-constructed curriculum of professional learning and support. With reference to the evidence-base for our curriculum choices and examples of our resources and work.
Reflections on Instructional Coaching: Pitfalls and how to avoid them
During this session, I will discuss how Instructional Coaching has been implemented at my school. I will explore the benefits and successes but more importantly, I will reflect on our weaknesses and how we plan to improve. As a coach myself, I will guide attendees through practical approaches to ensure success in delivering Instructional Coaching at the whole school planning stage as well as exploring challenges that may arise in the coaching relationship and how to address them.
How can we ensure consistency without imposing uniformity
Mentoring can fail in one of two ways: either the advice and guidance that is provided is vague and disjointed, or it is stiflingly prescriptive and fails to respect context and autonomy. In this session, Jon will propose a model that allows mentor to draw on sound principles and robust evidence, whilst allowing mentees to translate these principles in a way that allows them personal ownership.
Using Download Listening – how do we help others to understand and reflect upon the self better?
From Mentor to Coach: The University of Warwick’s ITE instructional coaching journey
In 2019, after recognising the need for a shift from the traditional directive and hierarchical mentoring approach that was prevalent in our partnership, CTE (Centre for Teacher Education) developed an ethical instructional coaching model, inspired by the work of Jim Knight (Impact Cycle, 2018), with the aim of transforming the thinking and practice of our mentors. The session will outline our journey and address the following areas to promote reflection and professional dialogue on the implementation of a coaching approach with Early Career Teachers:
– Rationale
– Principles of the Warwick coaching model and alignment with our Warwick Teacher Values and the Core Content Framework
– The underlying skills needed for the coaching model to be effective grounded in research
– Rethinking training as a blended model
– Challenges and potential barriers
– Where are we now? Ways forward.
We Lead Well: creating resilient leaders through coaching
We Lead Well: creating resilient leaders through coaching
SESSION 3
Building relationships with those you mentor
Having been a mentor for several years, to trainees, NQT’s and coaching more experienced staff, the most important thing to me is to build positive and supportive relationships with those you are mentoring. I would like to present how I have done this successfully and the outcomes it has led to.
Mentoring: A bridge over the cesspit
What if we invest in them and they leave?” “What if we don’t and they stay?” Mentoring your team onto bigger and better things
How, as a leader, you need to see the bigger picture for your staff, know their aspirations, sow seeds, create opportunities and encourage them on the path they want to follow. And what this looks like in reality with case studies and examples from Primary Schools.
Professional development and its impact on others
Yamina and Me will be exploring the importance of professional development and it’s impact on our personal development, our students’ outcomes and the wider school community. Yamina will discuss in detail how we can create spaces to promote inclusion and equality within our schools.
Theories of Action – Professional Growth Conversations
In this session, Kathryn will explore the work of Helen Timperley and the six enablers of professional growth conversations. Kathryn will explore how each of the enablers can be harnessed to drill into both teachers and leaders’ theories of action, enabling more purposeful conversations that lead to professional growth.
The six enablers Kathryn will explore are:
>Context – shaping our professional conversations and, in turn, is shaped by them.
>Resources – tools and expertise to help identify effective practice and relevant evidence.
>Relationships – agency for improving practice driven by trust, challenge and mutual respect.
>Knowledge – develop, refine and revise new actionable knowledge for practice.
>Culture – inquiry-focused and problem-solving culture with collective responsibility for solving problems of practice.
>Processes – clear purpose and structured processes that engage and test ideas and solutions about the possible causes of teaching and learning problems.
Timperley, (2015)
Developing a culture of mentoring across a school to support school improvement
“How can school leaders develop a culture that places mentoring and teacher development at the heart of school improvement? This session will explore the principles and practices that enrich teacher develop
This session will be useful for school leaders from SLT, heads of department, and professional tutors.”
Developing a dialogue with your trainees
The session will focus on how to make conversations effective and purposeful whilst ensuring that your trainee is developing into a reflective practitioner. Exploring how communication can be effective and where these messages have the potential of breaking down, the session will seek to provide strategies to support both parties in expanding their professional dialogue.
Using Deliberate Practice and Direct Instruction in an Employment-based Route into Teaching Early Years
How the use of deliberate practice and direct instruction specifically on an employment-based route into teaching early Years supports the professional development of trainee teachers, in schools experiencing high levels of socio-economic disadvantage.
TrustED: what makes a successful mentoring relationship?
Visible Role Models: How informal mentoring can empower parent teachers to remain and grow in the profession
SESSION 4
Getting the Most Out of Mentor Meetings
Your meetings with your mentee are a vital part of developing their progress. The way in which conversations are structured and the language used can have a major impact on how your mentee learns; this workshop will explore the ways in which you and your mentee can get the most out of your meetings.
Mentoring Diverse Educators
Training to be a teacher challenges us to explore our professional and our personal identities. We are humans-first, teachers second, but we often forget that. Mentors need to appreciate the diverse lived experiences of our early career teachers and the complexities of intersectional identities. As teacher trainers we need to consider how we empower early career teachers to be their authentic selves.
This session will explore:
• how we create psychological safety for courageous conversations
• how we reflect on our own power and privilege
• how we do the inner work before we start the outer work
• how we decentre ourselves as inclusive allies
• how we stand in solidarity and speak out on issues impacting our mentees
Communication Skills for Mentoring and Coaching
Great communication skills are key in any professional relationship but especially so within a mentoring or coaching partnership. In this session you will learn practical communication skills which will empower you ensure your mentees feel truly listened to, supported and understood.
Boundaries: The key to health and happiness (and hacks) as a Mentor
o Overview of different relationship dynamics – with / without boundaries (as per psychology / personality trait theory).
o Why are boundaries important for a Mentor? Role modelling / Moving away from co-dependence.
o Neuroscience – why does the brain benefit from boundaries?
o Which boundaries are vital for a Mentor?
o What do they look like? – ‘Hacks’ (not moving away from ‘high-quality’ experience)
o What boundaries are important for the ECT / mentee? How do we model / coach these?
o What happens if boundaries are not in place?
o How do we sustain the boundaries?
o Recap
o Takeaways
Coaching Conversations
New to Mentoring qualification & its impact on colleagues and learning
Prioritising and managing workload
Using mentoring to support teacher wellbeing
SESSION 5
The 3 Cs of Mentoring: Confidence, Collaboration, Challenge
This session will explore the 3 Cs for both mentors and those with whom they collaborate and includes:
• Why be a mentor?
• Why have a mentor?
• What goes wrong?
• What works brilliantly?
Getting the most out of early career teachers
This session will look at how important it is to nurture and develop ECTs through involving them in their own development and providing the conditions they need to thrive. The aim is to reassure practitioners of what they are already doing, but hopefully provide some inspiration for new ways of working.
Wellbeing- not a soft option!
Exploring how as Mentors we need to place wellbeing at the centre of our own work and at the heart of how we look after colleagues. Advice and strategies will be based on Lisa’s extensive work as a national trainer with Mental Health First Aid England as well as considering how good mentoring and coaching fits in with the Well Schools movement.
How to give effective, specific, directed and motivational feedback to a trainee
Establishing and Professionalising the role or ECT Mentor in our Primary Schools
Helping teachers manage their time effectively and secure a work/life balance
Coaching and Mentoring Teachers of the Future in FE: A values led approach
Instructional Coaching for Better Teaching and Learning
Venue
Manchester Communication Academy

COVID-19 Policy
We are still living through unusual times, so we want to make MentorED as safe as possible. We’re working closely with our host school to establish event protocols to maximise the safety of our speakers and delegates.
Whilst mask wearing is not compulsory, we would like you to consider the safety and comfort of other delegates throughout the day.
About MentorED
We seek to bridge the gap between research and practice and to break down the barriers between schools and universities, providing a golden thread from EYFS to FE to improve access and opportunities for all and, ultimately, to improve outcomes for children.
MentorEd is the UK’s first and only national conference dedicated to school-based mentoring. Mentors are the back bones of schools and sharing experiences, collaborating with other mentors and highlighting successful strategies that work in schools is what MentorEd is all about.
MentorED is run by practitioners with a wealth of recent and relevant experience in the classroom. Using reflective practice based on the experience of teachers in a range of scenarios and drawing on leading academic research, the conference provides evidence based, research led, practical strategies to deliver mentoring in schools.
Event Organisers

Haili Hughes
MEd, MA, MSc, PGCE, BA (Hons.)
FRSA. Senior Lecturer, English PGCE
University of Sunderland
For the last fifteen years, Haili Hughes has mentored teachers at all stages of their careers and now mentors ITT students as a Senior Lecturer on the English PGCE at the University of Sunderland. Alongside this, Haili works as Head of Education at IRIS Connect, where she helps to research and create professional development opportunities for teachers using video technology, working with some of the biggest education organisations in the UK. She is currently a fourth-year Doctoral candidate at Glasgow University after completing three Master’s degrees and is also a freelance education journalist who regularly writes for education publications worldwide. Her books, ‘Mentoring in Schools,’ ‘Preserving Positivity’ and ‘Humans in the Classroom’ have all received fantastic reviews and she is now working on two titles for Crown House and Routledge. Haili regularly speaks at conferences and events UK wide and runs her own local BrewEd events, as well as this national mentoring conference, MentorEd.

Jo McShane
Senior Lecturer: RE PGCE Programme Leader at University of Sunderland, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), CollectivED Fellow, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Jo has been a teacher for 25 years and has worked at classroom, middle and senior leadership levels in five schools and three universities. Frequently moving between school and university leadership roles has continued to refine her mentoring experience and enabled her to develop outstanding systems for mentoring within a large MAT in the North East. Experience as line manager for a large school team, induction lead for beginning teachers and SCITT director has complimented the mentoring practice Jo is taking forward at the University of Sunderland. Jo has written extensively on the ‘liminal’ and transitional aspects of mentoring trainee teachers and is undertaking her doctoral thesis on the theme of mentoring as a complex bridging activity across difficult terrains. As a CollectivED fellow she continues to make regular contributions to powerful knowledge exchange events, and is due to publish a book on mentoring beginning teachers alongside Helen Sheehan from Sheffield Hallam University in January 2022.