Mentoring in Early Childhood Education: Reshaped, Not Lost- Why We Need Each Other to Lift Us Up

The WELL Framework is built on four interconnected pillars.

💙 Wellbeing First

💚 Empower Through Learning

💛 Lead With Purpose

💜 Lift Each Other Up

At The Educators Well, we believe these pillars are far more than professional concepts. They are stepping stones that support us not only as educators, but as people. Each pillar builds naturally upon the one before it, creating a journey that begins within ourselves before extending outward into the lives of those around us.

We began with Wellbeing First, the reminder that we cannot keep pouring into others if our own well is running dry.

We moved into Empower Through Learning, discovering that some of the most important learning we will ever do has very little to do with qualifications and everything to do with life itself.

From there we arrived at Lead With Purpose, and the realisation that leadership was never about the position we hold. It is about the person we choose to become, and the influence we already carry long before anyone gives us a title.

Once we begin understanding our purpose and recognising the influence we already have, something starts to shift.

Our focus slowly moves away from asking, “How can I become a better leader?”

And towards a far more important question.

“How can I use my influence to help someone else grow?”

Which brings us to the fourth and final pillar.

Lift Each Other Up.

For me, this pillar has always been about mentoring in early childhood education — not the formal, credentialed kind, but the quiet, consistent presence of someone willing to walk alongside you when everything feels uncertain.

When Everything Feels Lost

There was a season where I genuinely believed my knowledge was gone.

Not misplaced. Not simply rusty from time away. Gone.

After my injury, when I sat back down to study, the words on the page didn't land the way they used to. I would read a sentence and lose it before I reached the end. I would search for a word I had used a hundred times before and come up empty. I remember staring at my own course notes wondering who the person was who had once understood all of this so easily.

If you have ever sat in a season like that, you will know the particular kind of grief that comes with it. It isn't just frustration. It is closer to loss. You start to wonder whether the person you were is someone you will ever get back.

I thought everything was lost.

I remember my first class back. Eight-thirty until four, a full day, and I couldn't tell you how I got myself home afterwards. I know I crashed straight into bed. Not tired in the ordinary sense. Completely depleted. Void of any will to go back.

I didn't know how to have the conversation that needed to come next. The words I needed to explain what I needed completely escaped me.

Thankfully, I wasn't left to find them alone. A psychologist, an exercise physiologist, and a return to work specialist all helped me work out what that conversation needed to sound like. Not to make me sound impressive, or like I had it all together. But to help me feel confident enough to actually ask for what I needed, which was simply this.

To be met where I was on any given day.

That is when Di stepped in.

She never knew the person I was before the injury. She only ever knew the person sitting in front of her, exhausted, uncertain, and questioning whether she had anything left to give.

She simply met me where I was.

Physically. Mentally. Cognitively. Exactly as I was on that particular day, not as I had been six months earlier, and not as she hoped I might become six months from then.

She encouraged me constantly. Not with empty positivity, but with the kind of steady belief that says, I see you, and I am not going anywhere.

She checked in on me regularly. Not once, not as a box to tick, but again and again, in the ordinary rhythm of simply showing up.

She followed up on my work. She didn't leave me to disappear into the silence that shame so often creates when you feel like you are failing at something that used to come easily.

And she worked with me, one on one, on a regular basis. Not because I demanded it. Not because it was owed to me. But because she recognised that some people need someone alongside them, not simply information handed to them from a distance.

Slowly, something began to shift.

Reshaped, Not Lost

I remember the moment it clicked.

Part of the course required three twenty-minute presentations, each built around a unit of work of our own choosing. I chose CHCECE037.

I brought in everything I could carry. Playdough, sand, shells, natural blocks, books, anything that could bring the learning to life. I built a slideshow. I built an entire unit of work around it. And then I stood up to present.

For twenty minutes, everything I had written down stopped mattering.

It just flowed.

I wasn't reading from notes or searching for the right words. It made sense. It came together the way it used to before the injury, except this time I hadn't forced it. People in that room with no early childhood background at all sat there and went, wow.

That was when I realised my knowledge hadn't disappeared.

It had been reshaping itself the entire time.

All of a sudden, I felt like I could do this.

It wasn't lost. It had been there the whole time, waiting patiently to be found again.

And in that room, something else happened too. My presentation wasn't just proof to myself that I still had it in me. It was inspiring the people watching to think differently, to see early childhood education through a lens they hadn't considered before. Their curiosity, their surprise, their own small moments of wow — all of it was empowering me right back, even as I stood there feeling the shift happen in real time.

What Lifting Each Other Up Actually Looks Like

When we hear the phrase “lift each other up,” it is easy to picture something grand. A speech that changes someone's life. A public celebration of how far someone has come. A mentor with a title, guiding someone through a formal program.

Di has done that for me too, many times since. She has celebrated me in front of a room, grown my confidence in ways that still catch me off guard, and stirred emotion in people who barely knew my story. Those moments have mattered, and they still do.

But that isn't where the turning point began.

The turning point was quieter than that. She showed up. Consistently. Quietly. In the unremarkable rhythm of checking in, following up, and adjusting to meet me exactly where I was on any given day.

There is a word for this that already sits at the heart of the WELL Framework.

Edification.

To encourage. To strengthen. To build up.

Edification rarely looks impressive from the outside. It looks like a phone call. A follow-up message. A person who remembers what you told them last week and asks about it again this week. A person who notices when you have gone quiet, and reaches out, rather than waiting for you to ask.

It is rarely loud.

It is almost always consistent.

And perhaps that is exactly why it works. Because the version of us that is struggling doesn't need a grand gesture. We need someone willing to keep showing up, long after the initial concern has worn off for everyone else.

How Mentoring in Early Childhood Education Happens Long Before Anyone Notices

As educators, I think we underestimate how often we are already doing this.

Perhaps you are the educator who checks in on a colleague after a hard day, not because you were asked to, but because you noticed.

Perhaps you are the Family Day Care educator who picks up the phone when another educator, working alone in their own home, has gone quiet for a few days.

Perhaps you are the mentor who follows up on the same piece of feedback three times, not because the person hasn't heard you, but because you know some lessons take more than once to land.

Perhaps you are the person who remembers a colleague's hard week and asks about it again the following week, long after everyone else has stopped asking.

None of those moments come with recognition.

None of them appear in a performance review.

None of them require a title, or permission, or the word “mentor” anywhere near your name.

Yet every one of them is an act of lifting someone up.

I think this is one of the reasons support network mapping matters so much within the WELL Action Plan. Because before we can lift others up, and before we can allow ourselves to be lifted, we need to know who is actually in our corner. Not who should be. Not who we assume would help if asked. But who has already shown up, consistently, in the ordinary moments that rarely get noticed.

Di was part of my support network long before I had the language to call her that.

Bringing It Full Circle

When I look back over this series now, I no longer see four separate pillars.

I see one journey.

Wellbeing First reminded us that we cannot keep pouring into others if our own well is running dry.

Empower Through Learning showed us that some of the most important learning we will ever do is learning about ourselves, and that even the seasons that feel like loss can quietly become the seasons that reshape us.

Lead With Purpose taught us that leadership was never about a title. It is about the person we choose to become, and the influence we already carry in the ordinary moments nobody sees.

And Lift Each Other Up has shown us that none of this was ever meant to happen alone.

Because wellbeing is easier to protect when someone checks in on you.

Because learning is easier to trust when someone believes in you before you believe in yourself.

Because purpose is easier to live out when someone reflects it back to you on the days you cannot see it in yourself.

Di didn't just help me find my way back to my knowledge. She helped me find my way back to myself. And in doing that, she became proof of everything this framework has been trying to say all along.

We were never meant to build wellbeing, learning, leadership, or purpose in isolation.

We were meant to build them together.

If there is one thing I hope you take from this series, it is this. You do not need a title to lift someone up. You do not need the perfect words, a program, or a plan. Sometimes it is as simple as showing up, again and again, and meeting someone exactly where they are.

And if you are the one who is struggling today, still searching for the words to ask for what you need, I hope you find your own version of Di.

Because your knowledge is not lost.

Neither is mine.

We are simply being reshaped.

If this series has landed for you the way it has for me, I would love for you to take the next step with us. The WELL Framework 12-Week Professional Development Program launches in September, and registrations of interest are open now.

[Register your interest here — LINK]

This is where wellbeing, learning, leadership, and community stop being four separate ideas, and become something we build together.

Reflection Question

Who has lifted you up, quietly and consistently, in a way you may not have fully acknowledged until now? And is there someone in your own life who needs you to be that person for them today?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

💜 Rachel Smith

The Educators Well

Wellbeing First • Empower Through Learning • Lead With Purpose • Lift Each Other Up