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Week 1

Page history last edited by Tamas Lorincz 11 years, 2 months ago

Week 1 (Jan 14th- 20th)

Introduction and Review: Mentoring Relationships 

 

  • Discuss/read about establishing and maintaining trust in conversations
  • Introductions: setting an example as first-impression introduction
  • Review of keywords in the field of mentoring
  • Introduction to Technology used in weeks 2-5
  • Homework: reading for week 2: (topic: Trust: building meaningful relationships)

 

Welcome to the mentoring group of EVO. We know from past sessions that we will have a diverse group of teachers - both beginning and experienced-, teacher educators, and program managers with an interest in mentoring. We are so happy that you have joined us!  This week is an introductions week, both human and technological. It is a chance to get to know each other and an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the technology which will serve us on this journey we take together. 

 

  • In this first week, we will  introduce ourselves when signing in for the group through Edmodo. 

  • Then , in the wiki, we will leave a comment on what mentoring means to us (having had experience with it or not) to start sharing and as a kickoff to our final project.

  • In the meantime we invite you to browse our Tutorials section since many activities in the coming weeks will involve participating in webinars and  you need to be registered to take part in them.   Tutorials

  • Remember to contact us  with any help you need or doubt you have or feeling that this is too technological. Check the different communication tools you have available to contact us. They are all  posted on the front page: Welcome to Developing Mentoring Skills 2013  

  • Our final product will be a reflection on the concepts you have discovered using  a visualization tool such as "glogster", "wordle" or "many eyes".  You can check their URLs in our Reading Library .

  • To guide you a bit further into the final product, and since our idea is that it be our reflections to share with others in the group, we have posted a sample for you. You can see a link on the Wordle sample page of a sample wordle made by Laura on the concepts of mentoring meaningful to her so far...

 

 

Here is a summary of the TitanPad discussion of week 1.

There are two versions (because the content on the pad was accidentally deleted by one of our participants). Version 1 and Version 2 (PDF)

 

Here's a wordle of the most frequently used expressions in the conversation:

Wordle: #mentorevo TitanPad week
Click on the image above to see a bigger version of the wordle on the website.

 

We also had a great conversation on Saturday 19th January 2013. Click here to watch a recording of the discussion. (Tech tip: Click on the link, download and run the file, wait for the recording to load.)

 

 

 

Comments (22)

Yasemin Yelbay said

at 3:58 pm on Jan 12, 2013

Wow all this sound so exciting. I am so happy that I enrolled in this course :)

Gitte said

at 2:36 pm on Jan 13, 2013

The instructions say: " Then , in the wiki, we will leave a comment on what mentoring means to us (having had experience with it or not) to start sharing and as a kickoff to our final project." Where do we do this? Here, as a comment?

marina gonzalez said

at 11:43 pm on Jan 13, 2013

Yes, right here!

Yasemin Yelbay said

at 6:07 pm on Jan 13, 2013

Thank you for bringing this up. I tought I was the only one who could not find it on wiki :) Let's wait and see :)

marina gonzalez said

at 11:44 pm on Jan 13, 2013

oh, no! don't worry about asking.. it's the only way we can all understand the same thing. Welcome again, as our Edmood moderators said already!

Yasemin Yelbay said

at 7:13 am on Jan 14, 2013

Thank you Marina :)

Yasemin Yelbay said

at 7:19 am on Jan 14, 2013

I have never had a mentoring experience at the institutions I worked before neither as mentor nor as mentee. I have some vague ideas of what it is in terms of profesional training environments. However, I do know what it is when I consider all interactions I have had with my colleagues in the course of my career. I have been the more experienced teacher who made suggestions to novice teachers, or helped them with materials or just provided some support when they were struggling with some specific classes and questioning whether teaching was the right profession for them... I was also the teacher who asked questions, shared experiences and complained about administrators and/or parents etc. to teachers whom I thouhgt were some steps ahead of me ...I think that mentoring must have to do with all these but maybe in a more systematic way rather than random interactions at times. Any reactions? Thank you.

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 9:01 am on Jan 14, 2013

Yes, all of those. Mentoring can be informal or formal. It has to do with showing the ropes, sharing expertise, advocating. A more formal mentoring relationship is intetential, with space/time set aside to intentionally move into a mentoring role with a colleague.

Roseli Serra said

at 11:04 pm on Jan 16, 2013

Hi Yasemin,

I perfectly know what you feel! at the beginning of my career , I pretty much felt the same way! When I got the the language institution as a young, experienced novice teacher, I was blessed by a teacher who informally mentored me in all ways. She was far more important than my coordinator. She helped me showing the school, them material, proof reading my lesson plans , etc, She taught me something a read later on on book called " CARING AND SHARING " by Gertrude Moskowitz , which says: TO REALLY CARE MEANS TO DARE TO SHARE". It was one of the most precious lessons I still carry with me as a teacher trainer, mentor, DOS, teachers, or whatever post I have. I must say that this caring informal mentoring made me a better person and professional since then. I stayed in this institutions for 18 years , reaching the highest post but I promised myself that this initial mentoring would be my duty and I did it. Perhaps this was the first ice breaker because when the formal mentoring had to be done, the atmosphere was much more relaxing and I and had the mentees much easily trusting me as a non-judgmental person but as someone interested in their professional and personal development.

Having been working in two other different institutions as the DOS and teacher trainer, everything in the school is organized, systematized, there are rights and duties , deadlines to be met, etc. However, I still use the same approach: Kindness, professionalism and hard -working. Last but not least , I always tr to remember his quotation - as Che Guevara would say : “Hay que endurecer, pero sin perder la ternura jamás.” ( "You have to harden, but without ever losing tenderness.")

I look forward to hearing from you and the others.

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 9:07 am on Jan 14, 2013

A first question this week flows from some of your comments and from the readings - who do you trust? How do you know you can trust them? How do you develop trust? Please post your thoughts!

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 7:12 pm on Jan 14, 2013

As Daniela has posted in Edmodo, we begin this week with three questions for you to respond to:
This is your first weekly assignment. Please go to Folders and you will find three materials. You can choose to do 1, 1+2, or 1+2+3, depending on your availability and interest. Then answer the following questions and post them here: http://titanpad.com/sGWDwmrtxD

1. What is your experience with mentoring?
2. What are some of the challenges mentors face?
3. Tell us your own personal challenges when mentoring.

There will be follow up questions later...

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 10:27 pm on Jan 15, 2013

Question 1 so far... I am reading your responses to Daniela's first question in titan pad. Once again this year, the members of this session represent diverse experience with regard to mentor experience, from participation in highly developed mentoring programs to more informal relationships, to creating their own structure/space for mentoring as it coincided with their work experience. Some of us are also teacher trainers who match mentors with student teachers.
We invite to go into http://titanpad.com/sGWDwmrtxD...

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 10:36 pm on Jan 15, 2013

Question 2 so far... Challenges we face as mentors: negotiating "accountability" directives in a mentoring program, establishing and maintaining a positive relationship between mentoring partners, helping the mentored to develop to full potential, inspiring, finding a compromise between two sets of expectations and needs, being a good listener, the lack of time!

The challenges so far seem to focus on 1. institutional restrictions 2. the building of a mentoring relationship 3. making a real, meaningful, positive difference.

We would love to hear from more of you. Don't hold back if your challenge sounds the same as someone else's - this establishes threads.

You can participate by just reading the posts of others OR by posting to one, two or three of the questions yourself.

Laura

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 10:45 pm on Jan 15, 2013

Question 3 so far... You have been very generous in your posts. One of the questions we were going to ask this week was about your definition of trust and how people earn your trust. You have trusted this group to share some real challenges in your life as a mentor, for which we thank you. I said in an earlier post that mentoring begins with a question. I will revise that. Mentoring begins with a step forward into a relationship, whether formal or informal.

It is very good to participate with this dedicated group of people. Please feel free to post - the questions are not closed yet!

Roseli Serra said

at 10:30 pm on Jan 16, 2013

1. What is your experience with mentoring?
I’ve been working in the field of ELT/ TEFL for about 25 years. Before I became a coordinator, a long time ago, I was invited to mentor the novice teachers and the new teachers at the language institute a used to teach. This was my very first experience as a mentor. I remember I was so excited, but at the same time, I felt scared and responsible. This first experience consisted of standing by those teachers, helping them learning about the institution, to get to know the material and how to use it, helping them with lesson plans, choice, sequence and use of some activities or simply adjusting some items of their lessons. I also used to do some peer observations and peer teaching sometimes.
Two years later I became a coordinator and with this new post I still mentored teachers. When you have a post, you are seen as a differentiated professional ( It shouldn’t be like this but this is the sad reality) . After all, you are now a “boss” and the jealous is minimised and turned into “respect” . I have experienced mentoring teachers for about 20 years, as a teacher, coordinator, academic manager, DOS and teacher trainer. For me mentoring is an ongoing process and as you mentor and led other to learn, you also learn from the others’ mistakes, creativity and new ideas.


Roseli Serra said

at 10:30 pm on Jan 16, 2013


2. What are some of the challenges mentors face?
All the challenges I will mention here were the difficulties I faced at the beginning of my career as a mentor. I reckon these challenges still exist. However, I transformed them into opportunities for my personal and professional development and I believe it made me to be a better teacher and mentor.
2.1 “Resentment” - What I felt when I was a mentor without having a formal post was a kind of “resentment” on the part of some teachers who were not invited to mentor. For me, personally speaking, this was one of the most difficulties I had to face because of the uncomfortable atmosphere it caused sometimes. Thank God I was able to deal with these situations and overcome the difficulties by trying to involve some colleagues in the process.
2.2 Age - Another difficulty I faced at the beginning was when I was supposed to mentor novice teachers who were older than me or more experienced, but who needed coaching for some reason. They looked at me suspiciously as if I had nothing to “teach” them. It was hard work but again, I was able to deal with the situation, although sometimes I had hard times.
2.3 Fear - Sometimes mentored teachers fear you. They are naturally afraid of being judged and think that they might lose their jobs because of you.

Mentors, then, have to be wise enough to approach the mentored teachers. It will all depend on a series of factors such as the school policy, how mentors approach, the purposes of mentoring, etc.

Roseli Serra said

at 10:30 pm on Jan 16, 2013

3. Tell us your own personal challenges when mentoring.
3.1 Be helpful, not judgmental
3.2 Invite mentored teachers to observe your teaching and give you feedback. You’ll be surprised!
3.3 Stand by those you are mentoring by giving them personal and professional support in order to improve their work/teaching.
3.4 Mentor teachers to become mentors and leaders – I do believe this is real professional development. Depending on the teacher, it will be a medium or long term process, but the sense of achievement when we manage to do it is absolutely unique! Believe me!

Natasa Bozic Grojic said

at 11:18 pm on Jan 16, 2013

I have already answered the questions in Titan Pad, but I am not sure whether I need to do it here as well. So, just in case I do, I'll paste my anwer from Titan Pad here:
Natasa Bozic Grojic
1. What is your experience with mentoring?
I haven't mentored anyone yet (or, at least, not officially - I always do my best to help new teachers any way I can). That's why I am going to talk about my experience with being a new teacher myself and a mentee.
When I started working at my school in 1989, I got a lot of help from my DOS. He had me sit in his class once a week and then use the same teaching model in my class, which he would sometimes observe. I know this sounds terribly structured, but his classes were anything but ordinary. He was (in fact, still is) a very creative teacher. The things he could do with a couple of pictures cut out of magazines!
Whenever he observed my class, he gave me a lot of constructive criticism. It was like a boot camp at times, but I loved it. He valued creativity and originality and he always encouraged me to experiment.
2. What are some of the challenges mentors face?
Being misunderstood, hurting the mentee's feelings, forcing his/her own teaching style onto the mentee, not making any impact on the mentee.
3. Tell us your own personal challenges when mentoring.
I believe I would find it hard to criticise. I hope we learn in this course how to do it tactfully.

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 11:14 am on Jan 17, 2013

Roseli and Natasa, thank you for your responses! Roseli, I will copy your posts into titan pad and I encourage you to go into titan pad and read the responses of others.

Laura Stoutenburg said

at 11:16 am on Jan 17, 2013

Roseli, I see you are already there! I thought your post sounded familiar.... :-)

Roseli Serra said

at 8:28 pm on Jan 18, 2013

:)

Roseli Serra said

at 6:21 pm on Jan 20, 2013

Dear moderators, thank you very much for your support on week 1 , for sharing our thoughts on Edmodo ?PDF docs and for the beautiful word cloud!

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