You sure you want me?

So today we had mentor training. If you're lucky enough to be a mentor, you are matched up with a first year teacher (FYT) and you help them in their first year (which is super hard and overwhelming--much like every year of teaching. Ha!). That's a lot of parenthesis for one sentence, but I don't care. :) First of all, every time I heard FYT or saw it written today, Michael Jackson's PYT popped into my head. Second of all, it was probably one of the best trainings I've been to. I learned a lot. I have mentored before, but never been give such clear, explicit instructions and guidelines. The delivery was awesome too. They had decorated the room and had all kinds of treats and toys, etc. And the "aha's" were abundant. "Aha's" are what we call it when you're like "Duh! It makes so much sense now!". Anyways the two things I'm taking away from it are: be positive and check in daily. So that's what I plan to do with my FYT. At one point Anne Marie (former 3rd grade teacher, but we won't get into that) says that mentoring is like walking beside your FYT on this journey. I concurred and asked, "But God, what happened when there was only one set of footprints in the sand?" I always liked that story about God and the footprints. Once we stopped laughing we figured that we would act as God did walking on the beach that day. In other words, we would walk with our mentees until they needed us to carry them. Or the other way around. Whichever happened first. I'm pretty sure someone started singing "What if God was one of us?" too.