Thank you for your interest in AWSP’s mentoring program. At AWSP, we believe strong leadership support is essential for both success and sustainability in the principalship. One of the many benefits of your AWSP membership is access to a trained mentor – a fellow school leader who will walk alongside you, offering guidance, encouragement, and real-world perspectives as you grow your leadership.Â
2025-26 School Year
Our mentoring program will provide you with 10 hours of virtual support during the 25-26 school year. This year, all mentors are working on a volunteer basis, which may limit our ability to meet specific needs. Please fill out the form below to request mentoring support. Requests for mentoring will be addressed on a first-come come first first-served basis.
If you have any questions regarding the mentor program, please reach out to Macy Bruhy.
Why Mentoring Matters
The principalship is more demanding than ever. Principals are creating the culture, systems, and instructional conditions necessary for all children to achieve at high levels in an economic and social context that is complex, challenging, and fraught with inequity for children and families.
Mentoring can support the development of new school administrators as instructional leaders and increase principal and assistant principal retention, contributing to greater stability in school reform efforts over time.
A mentor is not someone who walks ahead of us and tells us how they did it. A mentor is someone who walks alongside us to guide us on what we can do. – Simon Sinek
Mentoring Resources
National Association of Elementary School Principals: National Mentor Training & Certification Center
“Since 2003, NAESP has worked with close to 2,000 mentors across the country as well as globally, to engage highly-skilled and highly-trained mentors in leveraging their experience and expertise to develop new leaders.”
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The Principal Mentor Network of New Mexico Leadership Institute
While tied to their state licensure requirements, this resource site does include many downloadable documents that can be used as-is or adapted to other contexts.
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Churn: The High Cost of Principal Turnover
Twenty-five thousand (one quarter) of the country’s principals leave their schools each year, adversely affecting millions of children’s lives. This report challenges the myth that developing a strong principal pipeline is where America should be focused.
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If You Listen, We Will Stay: Why Teachers of Color Leave and How to Disrupt Teacher Turnover
This report comprises authentic narratives of teachers of color and successful school leaders. For this report, researchers conducted focus groups with teachers who identify as Black or Latino who talked about their experiences in the workforce and what schools, districts, and states could do to keep them in the field. Researchers also conducted case studies in schools and districts that were selected for their intentionality around retaining teachers of color.
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Taking Stock of Principal Pipelines: What Public School Districts Report Doing and What They Want to Do to Improve School Leadership
The Wallace Foundation commissioned the RAND Corporation to interview district leaders across the country in fall 2019 to broaden understanding about the prevalence of and interest in activities related to principal preparation, hiring, support, and evaluation (referred to as pipeline activities). This report presents findings from an interview effort conducted between October and December 2019 to provide a baseline description of principal pipeline activities in districts across the country. It builds on a multiyear evaluation of principal pipelines as described in Principal Pipelines: A Feasible, Affordable and Effective Way for Districts to Improve Schools.
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