ROCK HILL—The Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement (CERRA) and the Division of Educator Quality and Leadership will host a Train the Trainer Workshop June 12-13 at the South Carolina Archives and History Center and will sponsor a South Carolina Mentor Training June 18-20 at E.L. Wright Middle in Columbia.

Educators and administrators wishing to attend an upcoming training should seek approval from their district mentor coordinator before registering online at www.cerra.org.

The South Carolina Mentor Training is a three-day foundational training focusing on the knowledge, skills, and understandings critical to those accomplished teachers who work with beginning teachers. Mentor trainings are guided by the belief that learning to teach is a career-long developmental process that involves continuous cycle of planning, teaching, and reflecting. At the core of this work is the mentor’s ability to respond to each new teacher’s individual developmental and contextual needs and to promote the ongoing examination of classroom practice.

More than 1,200 South Carolina educators have completed the mentor certification process since July 2007 and are now working in their schools as certified mentors.

“Mentors are recognized educational leaders who provide a critical service by fulfilling a role that is essential to high quality teaching that results in increased student achievement,” says Jason Fulmer, the CERRA program director who leads the program. “The South Carolina Mentor training provides the insight needed to understand the broad scope of mentor roles and responsibilities. A mentor’s work not only serves our beginning teachers, it makes our learning communities stronger.”

Trainings this summer will assist school districts in building a cohort of trained mentors to meet the South Carolina Mentoring and Induction Guidelines. Upon completion of the training, participants will become certified mentors.

Train the Trainer is a comprehensive, two-day training for educators who have completed a South Carolina Mentor Training. This workshop prepares certified mentors to be effective mentor trainers in their schools and districts. More than 150 school and district personnel from across the state took part in this training since July 2007.

 

CERRA, an independent state agency located on the campus of Winthrop University, is the oldest and most established teacher recruitment program in the country. The purpose of CERRA is to provide leadership in identifying, attracting, placing and retaining well-qualified individuals for the teaching profession in South Carolina. CERRA’s programs have been adopted at school, district and state levels in more than 30 states in the United States.