Talking to our staff has always come naturally to us. After each session, we reflect on our key children with each other; we plan for the next day; we talk about challenges, and discuss any other business that comes up. However, with the emphasis now on supervision in the revised EYFS, we have developed a mentoring system that will incorporate all these conversations and work alongside our appraisal system.
The new s system has provided an opportunity to discuss issues such as key children's learning and development and professional development for practitioners in a more formal and regular way.
After a little research into mentoring we found a summary, which summed up what we wanted to achieve from the sessions: to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills and improve their performance.
MOTIVATING PRACTITIONERS
This system has already been instrumental in motivating practitioners in their personal practice and gives us an ideal opportunity to review any issues that we felt needed to be addressed, without calling a member of staff into the office for a 'talk'.
Practitioners are given time to discuss their key children's development in a more in-depth way, planning for individual children is examined and learning journeys looked at, as are progress and next possible steps.
These sessions are also good to reflect on training needs. Our practitioners are encouraged to update their knowledge, as we have always given priority to the continued professional development of all practitioners, so this time can also be used to look through our training brochure in more detail.
We have recently appointed one practitioner to the new role of birth-to-threes co-ordinator. The mentoring session gave us the chance to talk about this new role together and to offer suggestions on how to evaluate the provision.
After the initial nervousness of some practitioners to the changes, we feel that everyone now welcomes the new system. It has been beneficial to have some extra quality time to talk about challenges faced or sensitive issues and has offered the chance to have that one-to-one support that everyone deserves when working in early years.