Who We Are
The Lead Team
Noa Daniel
Noa Daniel MEd is a teacher, consultant, the Chief Building Officer at Building Outside the Blocks (BOB) and the founder and director of The Mentoree.
Noa is also a podcaster, a children’s book author and writer, TEDx and keynote speaker. She hosted the weekly live OnEdMentors show on VoicEd Radio. Noa blogs about her work in and outside of school including chronicling the continuous growth of The Mentoree.
Noa loves to present on the power of mentorship in education, among other topics. Noa is also a director on the board of Learning Forward Ontario, member of the International Mentoring Association and part of the Thinkering Collective.
Teri Rubinoff
Teri Rubinoff PhD is the Programming and Research Coordinator at The Mentoree, a Course Facilitator at The MEHRIT Centre, an AQ Course Instructor and Developer at Queen’s University, and a Contract Lecturer at Lakehead University. She has also held a variety of roles in K-12 education including Special Education Consultant and Early Years Consultant in a publicly-funded school district in Ontario, Canada. Her ongoing academic interests include teacher mentorship, play-based kindergarten, and self-regulation. The common theme in all Teri’s work is supporting the ongoing learning of novice and experienced educators through co-regulating relationships.
Christine Chin
Christine Chin moved from being a classroom teacher and teacher-librarian to a curriculum consultant and then to school administrator. Her background is in French Immersion, and she remains dedicated to creating and nurturing collaborative learning cultures that support teachers, students, and their families. Christine’s experiences have informed her understanding of how to support students who face specific challenges within the French Immersion setting.
Through her experience leading work for the New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) and Literacy instruction, she has enjoyed the process of supporting teachers to further develop their skills and continue along their learning journeys. Her participation on the Leadership Team at The Mentoree has allowed her to be inspired by others and find creative ways to give back to her community.
Christine is our Operations and Digital Infrastructure Development Coordinator.
Advisory Council
Melissa Jensen MEd has enjoyed supporting educators in their professional learning and continues to do so as a retired educator. She is happy to share the expertise learned from her variety of teaching and leadership experiences as a educator.
Being the Community Outreach Coordinator at The Mentoree allows Melissa to use her well-developed networking and collaboration skills. She is a strong advocate for self-selected professional learning and knows that she benefited greatly in her teaching career by learning from others outside her school and district.
Melissa Jensen
Our Story
The Mentoree began as a collaborative inquiry into the impact of a 1:1 self-directed mentorship experience on professional learning and student achievement. Through a phased approach, we created a community that supports 1:1 self-directed mentorship experiences as professional learning to strengthen teacher efficacy and impact student achievement. Our goal continues to be fostering responsive, reciprocal and non-hierarchical relationships between Mentors and Mentees and among the community at large. Even the name itself blurs the lines between Mentor and Mentee.
Our Full Story
It all started with the OnEdMentors podcast — the longest running live show on voicEd Radio created to mentor preservice and new teachers. Today, vibrant and informative weekly discussions take place among passionate educators addressing questions, exploring perspectives and learning from each other.
In an effort to make mentorship more accessible to teachers at any stage of their career, Noa Daniel went to Leigh Cassell of Digital Human Library to help broaden the reach and impact of OnEdMentors by exploring how mentorship could be a primary source of professional learning and change for educators. They wondered how they could create a space where teachers could go when they wanted to learn and grow on their own terms and on their own time. Building on the name OnEdMentors, the vision for OnEdMentors Connect (OEMConnect) was formed in January 2018.
After engaging a small team of mentors and critical friends, Noa and Leigh launched a collaborative inquiry into the impact of a 1:1 self-directed mentorship experience on professional learning and student achievement. Through a progressive phased approach in the months that followed, our community continued to grow and evolve into the thriving community of mentorship available to educational professionals today.
Building on the success of OEMConnect, Noa and Leigh began imagining a space to house a variety of services that focus on mentorship for educational professionals. It wasn’t long before they were playing with names for this new space (one of Noa’s favourite things to do), like The Complimentary. What resonated most with the founders was the latter half the word Complementory because it sounded like the blending of mentor and mentee. Naming the organization The Mentoree would say everything they wanted it to.
The name represents a reciprocal, non-hierarchical mentorship community that blurs the lines between mentor and mentee. The Mentoree would focus on mentorship as a primary source of professional learning for educators at any stage in their career. We all have something to teach, and we all have something to learn.
Today, The Mentoree is run by a leadership team led by Noa, and it has become an even more collaborative community. We’ve extended our offerings beyond but including 1:1 Mentorship. What began as a small group of educators exploring mentorship has evolved into a thriving community of educators dedicated to learning from and with one another.
The success of The Mentoree would not have been possible without The Mentoree Leadership Team and the Mentors and Mentees who are actively engaged in the community, making it a more supportive and inspiring place for everyone.
We all have something to teach, and we all have something to learn.
Join Us!
– Noa Daniel, Christine Chin, and Teri Rubinoff
The Mentoree Leadership Team
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