Henderson – Community of Practice peer mentoring 

Our community practice is based on what the mentors, the peer mentors, have asked for. They’re all really busy, some in very overwhelming positions, and they’ve asked to have a very…They don’t want homework. They don’t want to have to think of things they have to do before they get there. So, ours is we meet over a meal, and we usually get some pizza good or go to a pizza place, and we just chat.  

And I have always come in with some topics of conversation that are maybe I’ve seen on the news or got some e-blasts lately and I figured we would all get the same. Thinking, if there’s a lull in the conversation, I could kind of spark that and I’ve never had to use them because our conversations just… We talk about politics, we talk about what’s going on in people’s centers, the move, our childcare is moved to the Ministry of Ed, which is huge, the staffing crisis. So many of our centers on the coast are, have closed or are running at not full capacity because of staffing. So, there’s a lot of, a lot of uncertainty on the coast in child care. So, it’s been really nice to be able to share those, share the stresses and the triumphs as well.  

Within our group, I’ve seen some people who are struggling with the position that they’re in because of the workload. And through the support of their peer mentors, they’ve been able to help support them to find different things that can help them through the bumps in the road and give them advice on how they could maybe lessen their workload or be okay with saying no and support them in doing those things. And so, if people have, there are people that are still in the positions that a few years ago they were talking about leaving.