The 12-week Mentor Success Academy program, week by week
The Mentor Success Academy program runs for 12 weeks in three four-week focus areas: Emotional Climate & Responsiveness (weeks 1–4), Classroom Organization (weeks 5–8) and Instructional Support (weeks 9–12). Each week has one online training module with 16 coaching scenarios, one for each profile in MSA’s LEAP framework, for 192 scenarios in all.
Emotional Climate & Responsiveness
Mentors learn to coach the emotional side of the classroom: warmth, responsiveness, seeing the child’s perspective and keeping every child emotionally safe.
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Week 1
Warmth & Connection
Building warm, joyful emotional environments where children thrive.
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Week 2
Teacher Responsiveness
Noticing and responding to children's emotional and academic needs with attunement.
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Week 3
Regard for Child Perspective
Honoring what children think, feel, and want as central to learning.
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Week 4
Emotional Safety & Repair
Building emotional safety by minimizing sharpness, sarcasm, and shame — and repairing when they happen.
Classroom Organization
Mentors learn to coach how a classroom runs: guiding behavior, protecting learning time, keeping children engaged and designing a space that supports learning.
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Week 5
Proactive Classroom Guidance
Coaching mentees to prevent, redirect, and respond to child behavior with proactive, behavior-specific, respectful precision — matched to each mentee's natural leadership expression.
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Week 6
Maximizing Learning Time
Maximizing learning time through smooth routines, prepared materials, and minimal waiting.
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Week 7
Instructional Learning Formats
Maximizing children's engagement and learning through active facilitation, varied materials, and a clear sense of purpose.
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Week 8
Learning Environment Design
Creating physical spaces that actively support learning and child agency.
Instructional Support
Mentors learn to coach how teachers build thinking and language: concept development, feedback that moves learning forward, rich language and higher-order questions.
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Week 9
Concept Development
Moving children from rote facts to deep understanding through analysis and inquiry.
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Week 10
Quality of Feedback
Giving children feedback that advances their thinking — not just evaluates it.
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Week 11
Language Modeling
Using rich, complex language to build children's vocabulary and oral language.
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Week 12
Higher-Order Questioning
Moving from recall questions to analysis, inference, and evaluation.
Everything a mentor needs to learn, practice and grow
Most programs know mentoring works. What's hard is knowing how to mentor well and keeping it going week after week. MSA gives mentors the training, and gives mentors, mentees and directors a shared plan to stay on track.
Mentor training
The heart of MSA. Twelve weekly modules with real classroom scenarios teach mentors how to coach teachers with different personalities and working styles, using MSA’s LEAP framework (Leadership Expression Assessment Profile).
Weekly reflections
Mentors and their mentees each reflect on the week's focus, so every meeting starts from what's actually happening in the classroom.
Classroom observations
The Quality Interaction Framework gives mentors a clear, consistent way to observe teacher–child interactions and talk about them.
Director dashboard
Directors see each mentor's training and mentoring progress at a glance and can step in early when someone falls behind.
Mentor certification
After all 12 modules, mentors can take a 12-scenario certification test, one scenario from each week. Passing earns the annual MSA Certified Mentor credential, with a printable certificate.
Coaching call library
Recorded coaching calls and resources stay available, so new mentors can catch up and experienced ones can revisit.