Mentors

The Early Literacy Matters is proud to introduce the Mentor Program. The ELM mentoring program is designed to enhance the planning, organization, communication, teaching and leadership skills of Early Childhood Educators. The program promotes imagination, creativity and teamwork by providing guidance, support and teaching skills to participating ELM early childhood teachers.

Program mentors will model the qualities that can best be described as the five C's of effective teaching: caring, competence, creativity, commitment, and courage. This will be done through brainstorming sessions, meetings, trainings, and workshops.

The goal is to strengthen teaching skills already learned and develop new techniques to optimize teachers' knowledge in early childhood education. This will result in providing children with learning environments that will nurture and stimulate their minds and bodies in all of the developmental domains.

Mentor Qualifications

• The teacher must participate in the ELM program for a minimum of one year
  
• E-COT scores need to reflect a 4 or higher on 50% of the teacher skills area
  
• Continual implementation of literacy must be evident in the classroom
  
• Willingness to collaborate with other mentors, and share ideas with other ELM participants
  
• A referral from the assigned coach is required, and should be submitted with the mentor application.
  
• Upper level mentoring program for mastery level teachers and/or interns

Mentor Requirements

• Collect activities, work samples and lesson plans to add to our resource files.
  
• Create ELM activity packets to support emergent       literacy strategies in classrooms
  
• Provide ongoing support to preschool teachers within their centers
  
• Develop and facilitate workshops for entry level       teachers
  
• For contact information about the mentor program     please contact Rhonda Sims at 813-259-6458 or rsims2@hccfl.edu