English language teaching is a very dynamic and challenging profession. Language teachers should reflect on and build upon their practices regularly; novice and junior teachers can be guided by senior teachers. Senior teachers can support, guide and advice junior teachers through mentoring. Mentoring is a collaborative relationship between more experienced teachers or mentors and junior ones or mentees. Janas (1996) thinks that successful mentoring is important for staff development (p. 2). Mentoring helps to shift from teacher training to continuing professional development. It is a beneficial, multi-phases and sustainable process of guiding teachers. Communicating, coaching, facilitating, problem-solving, reflection and feedback are key skills for good mentors. Mentoring helps to sustain professional development and develop teacher leadership as well.

Mentors facilitate learning through preparing, negotiating, enabling growth and closure. They act as friends, role models, confidants and possibilities nurturers. Mentors help their adult mentees develop their teaching, pedagogy, and leadership careers and engage them in planning, implementing, and reflecting on their learning and progress. They create and sustain supportive learning environment for their mentees. They encourage their mentees to self-reflect and self-direct and to share their own practices and experiences. Mentors encourage them to take the lessons learned into practice, and they motivate mentees by acknowledging their successes. Mentors are facilitators of mentees' learning. They establish safe and stimulating learning environments. They involve their mentees in planning how and what they will learn and encourage them to define their learning objectives. Mentors encourage mentees to define and use learning resources, which include their own experiences. They help mentees present to students and colleagues and to self-assess their performance and learning. To facilitate their mentees' learning, mentors ask reflective questions to challenge their mentees' thinking, stimulate their reflection, and reformulate their mentees' statements, so they deeply reflect on their learning. Mentors summarize what their mentees say to check progress. They listen for the silence of their mentees who need time to think quietly and listen reflectively to provide constructive feedback. They help their mentees develop SMART goals stated in one or multiple sentences to enhance their personal and professional development. They challenge mentees' thinking through specific, concrete, and clear communication. Mentors focus on mentees' future development by linking to mentees' reflective questions, leading them to make measurable quantitative and qualitative improvements using different strategies to achieve.

There are different types of mentoring; one-to-one, peer, group, training-based, executive, career, reverse, speed and distance mentoring. The one-to-one mentoring is the most common model. It helps to link one mentor to one mentee. It helps to develop the personal relations and professional support for the mentees. However, some mentors might not be available all the time. The peer mentoring is a beneficial relationship between two persons who are interested in sustaining their personal and professional development. Peer mentors come together as they have things to learn form and contribute to one another through a give-and-take dynamic process. The group mentoring helps to link some mentors to one mentor at a time. This model helps mentees to learn from one another and the mentor as well. It helps to develop knowledge, skills and experience. The group meets regularly to discuss personal and professional development topics. However, it might be hard to schedule regular meetings. Sub-group and remote meetings might help overcome such challenges. The training-based mentoring is a training program part. It helps to develop specific knowledge, skills and experience required for certain positions or roles. It has the key focus on skills included in training program or role orientation. However, it does not help to enhance the mentee's broader skills. The executive mentoring is a top-down model which helps to develop mentoring culture, knowledge and skills throughout schools, institutes and organizations. It helps to develop organizational planning and development. It helps to develop more new leaders for schools, institutes and organizations. The career mentoring is an on-the-job training. It helps to link junior professionals with experienced ones. It helps to enhance the mentees' personal and professional development through asking questions and sharing experiences on personal skills and professional experiences. It helps to create and continue professional learning communities and networks of junior and experienced professionals. Reverse mentoring is a flipped model in which junior professionals help senior professionals develop new skills. Speed mentoring is a model of some one-to-one conversations to prepare the mentees for certain tasks or roles in a short time.

The distance or e-mentoring is a model in which mentors and mentees are physically separated due to geographical, travel and global limitations and challenges. It is beneficial for both mentors and mentees as they develop their knowledge, skills and expertise. The mentors and mentees collaborate and communicate with each other through technology solutions. Zachary (2012) thinks that collaboration is key to learning and growth as "mentor and mentee travel a parallel journey" (p. 16). They use emails, telephoning, social media applications, teleconferencing and online platforms. There are some strategies for effective distance or e-mentoring. The strategies are matchmaking, follow through, purposeful interactions and in-person meetings. The matchmaking means to have mutual and trusted mentor-mentee links that develop and increase confidence. The follow through means to develop, prioritize and act upon personal commitments. The purposeful interactions mean to plan, conduct and reflect on mentoring meetings and to be open to constructive feedback. The in-person meetings mean to use technology solutions to schedule, conduct and reflect on individual meetings. There are different techniques for effective distance mentoring. Mentors should take time to build relations and sustain trust and commitments. They should develop different plans for unexpected situations and listen actively to their mentees. They should conduct frequent comminutions and make use of technology. They should have face-to-face meetings with their metness when possible and react to mentees spontaneously.

Mentoring is developmental and teacher leadership is transformational. Mentoring helps to develop language teachers, educators, leaders, and schools as well. Fullan (2002) thinks that school improvement is a journey (p. 17). Language teachers, educators, and school leaders collaborate to develop their schools in different ways including mentoring. According to Preskill and Torres (1999), “Learning is maximized through opportunities to share individual knowledge and experiences with others” (p. 23). Learning from others transforms schools into professional learning communities that support teachers, other educators, leaders, and schools. Trust, communication, and feedback are beneficial to school mentoring programs. Successful mentoring programs require mentor-mentees matching, mentor training, adequate resources, and school support. Schools assign enough time, resources, opportunities for language teachers, other educators and leaders to meet, discuss, reflect, and grow in face-to-face, blended, or virtual sessions. Therefore, they help each other develop both personally and professionally. This process also develops school leadership and cultivates more school leaders, sustaining the leadership pipeline. Gilles and Wilson (2004) suggested mentoring builds leadership capacity as it is "somewhat developmental" (p. 87). Mentors offer different opportunities for conversation, reflection, and feedback, so that they help develop future leaders.

References

Fullan, M. (2002). The change leader. Educational Leadership, 59(8), 16–20.

Gilles, C., & Wilson, J. (2004). Receiving as well as giving: Mentors' perceptions of their professional development in one teacher induction program. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 12(1), 87–106.

Janas, M. (1996). Mentoring the Mentor: a challenge for staff development. Journal of Staff Development, Volume 17 No. 4, 2-5

Preskill, H., & Torres, R. (1999). Evaluative inquiry for learning in organizations. SAGE Publications, 17–50.

Zachary, L. J. (2000). The mentor's Guide: Facilitating effective learning relationships. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1-31