Teacher Mentorship BC: A Provincial Conversation | April 10-11, 2014

The first conference on teacher mentorship in British Columbia was held at the Radisson Hotel Vancouver Airport from Thursday, April 10 to Friday, April 11, 2014. The conference, Teacher Mentorship: A Provincial Conversation, aimed to reveal greater understanding of the current state of early career challenges and mentoring practices throughout BC, and stimulate the ways and means to more cohesively sustain our new professionals. The sponsoring partners of this conference were Teacher Mentorship BC, the BC Teachers’ Federation, the New Teacher Mentoring Project, and the UBC Teacher Education Office.

The conference featured an interactive panel discussion with Linda Farr Darling (UBC), Maureen Dockendorf (Ministry of Education), Monica Pamer (Richmond School District), Melody Li (Coquitlam School District), Glen Hansman (BCTF), moderated by Nancy Hinds (BCTF), as well as a full day workshop with Dr. Lois J. Zachary, who is President of Leadership Development Services, a Phoenix-based consulting firm that specializes in leadership and mentoring, and Director of its Center for Mentoring Excellence.

There were about 130 conference attendees coming from all regions of the province, including teachers, school and district administrators, university faculty, local teacher association representatives, and staff of BC Ministry of Education. Feedback from the attendees has shown that this conference offered a productive startup for the teaching professionals to initiate a cross-provincial dialogue on teacher mentoring and to reinforce the need of developing a culture of teacher mentorship in British Columbia.