TEFL mentors needed!
A thought- (and hopefully action-) provoking guest piece by Louise Lee
“I sometimes think that jumping out of a plane at 15,000ft was a piece of cake compared to my intensive TEFL course followed by the first four months of teaching. Luckily, as I was plummeting towards the ground, gripped by heart bursting, rational thought destroying terror, I was strapped to an enormous, highly experienced Kiwi bloke who knew exactly what he was doing. There have been times in the classroom when I’ve felt like I’ve leapt out of a plane armed with a Kit-Kat wrapper and a slightly strange smile.
I started thinking about how great it would be to have the TEFL teacher’s equivalent of the giant Kiwi – someone I could trust to help me through the crucial first year or two of teaching. When the initial free-fall feeling begins to wear off, a desire to develop some teaching skills kicks in and this is when a mentor would be invaluable. I’ve just read Lindsay Clandfield‘s piece ‘The Six Things To Do As Soon As You Finish Your TEFL Course’ and point 6 really hit home. Yes, I do feel like a fraud, particularly when I’m struggling to give a decent explanation of a grammar point that I’ve known about for roughly half the number of years that my students have. Yes, I’m reading loads and participating online too but here’s the catch – I didn’t think carefully enough about point 3 (be discerning about your first job), so there aren’t any more experienced peers that I feel I can talk to when I want to have a real person, chew-the-fat brainstorming session with someone who has more knowledge and a real interest in helping me improve my teaching. Teachers often just scurry past each other on the way to the next lesson and are effectively isolated for much of the working day/night. In addition, TEFL teachers often lead a nomadic lifestyle (oh the glamour) so establishing a mentoring relationship that can be maintained regardless of where you are in the world could be a real foundation for development. A mentor who shares a particular interest could help accelerate your learning and bypass hours of searching for the best books or courses. They could support you in weaker areas or maybe just elbow you in the ribs, without you having to worry about whether you’ll still be working on Monday. Mentors stand to benefit from the relationship too – it helps them refine their teaching practice and hand on the knowledge they’ve been collecting for years.
There are loads of forums and discussion boards online which are a fantastic resource but I couldn’t find a TEFL teacher’s mentoring site. I imagined that there would be a database somewhere which would match mentors with mentees (that’s not a real word), assisted by lots of clever filtering fields. I think there’s a real need for a system of – well governed – professional support in the TEFL world. Does anyone out there agree and or want to contribute ideas about how a system like this could function? Do we have a TEFLer with good database building skills who’d like to collaborate? Are there any potential mentors out there who would be willing to get the idea off the ground and start mentoring me?! Answers on a postcard please…my email address is llbreeze@yahoo.com. I’d love to think that in six months time Alex will be letting me back on to say how and why mentoring works!”
Tags: guest writers
February 19th, 2009 at 5:23 am
This is a wonderful idea but needs a loaves and fishes type miracle.
TEFL is a knowledge and skills based job. It’s what I know that sets me apart from newcomers. Why should I just give away my skills and knowledge? Just for the fuzzy glow of helping a colleague? Hmmn.
Years ago I made a conscious choice not to work on certificate level training courses again. They just produce a flood of fresh meat for the schools to exploit. The money paid to trainers is not that great and the workload is considerably more than regular teaching. Stress levels can be high too, as some trainees have a rather combative nature. All-in-all I’d rather not be involved.
Kudos to Alex for putting so much good material on this site. I suppose Alex hopes to get some writing work on the strength of this ‘shop window’ and he obviously enjoys it. It’s certainly been very useful to me.
My advice to people new to the job is to educate yourself. The books are out there. There are a few other websites like this one. Once you have 2 years experience, you can do a Diploma. I am not a genius – far from it. Nobody mentored me. I picked up what I know along the way.
I once worked in a place where we worked in teams and shared classes. One teacher planned all the lessons and then we swapped classes. This made for some sharing of ideas and was the last time I learned something directly from another teacher. In all my jobs since then, any sharing has been strictly a one way street from me to them.
My last job was a 3 month temporary contract. There was a lot of whining from other staff because I wouldn’t share my ideas and materials. I tried to explain why a few times but they just didn’t get it. I said any formal training sessions would have to wait until I had a full-time one year contract. In the end I decided not to renew (and doubt there ever was any plan to make me permanent). There were other reasons but this constant niggling was a factor.
TEFL is not really a profession – more like a trade. Try asking an electrician to teach you his job next time he’s in your house and see how far you get.
I sincerely hope the OP finds someone to help her out, but just wanted to explain why it might be quite hard to find mentors. What’s in it for us??
February 19th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Hi Louise,
I understand how you feel – we’ve all been there when we started off but I’ve got to say I’m a bit with Andy!
It’s not that I don’t like mentoring and as a former DOS twice, have done quite a bit of it. Some of it was really worth it and some of those teachers are now dear friends.
It’s more on the pay-back side. Not only financially.
The truth is while there are some very keen teachers like yourself, there are so many who aren’t. There are way too many of the “what can I get from this person with years of experience without putting forth a single penny” types.
Not that you have to – I mean those of us blogging are hardly doing it for mega moola. We’re sharing, in our own way mentoring, but it’s up to the teachers to come find us and get the advice.
The methodology books are out there in the droves. We’ve read them!
I can’t begin to list the times I have been asked if I could just pop over to someone’s flat to give them some tips and advice on how to teach. Seriously, they ask me to come over to their houses and train them.
The thing is that there are way too many newbies who are really only doing the TEFL thing as a stop-gap, you know, until they get a ‘real job’ in sales or marketing or business administration or accounting or whatever it is they really want to do with their lives.
It gets so exhausting not to mention insulting especially when they make these confessions to you after you’ve put in the time and energy to train them.
The best advice I can give is to join a teachers association and to attend EFL conferences.
Generally you have to pay a small fee however this pays for teacher-trainers to come train you and a group. There are international associations and there are national ones. Check IATEFL for a good list.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 am
Well, I guess some people do have bad experiences and I won’t argue with their personal feelings . . . however, I do feel that a ‘protectionist’ attitude towards knowledge is really counterproductive.
For me mentoring is a way to be a better teacher myself. It makes me think about what I do in a different way. I’ve been in TEFL for 10 years now, I’ve been a mentor in a variety of situations (and not only for TEFL) and I have always gained at least as much as I have given. I think in order to work, the mentor relationship has to be a good fit, and I think, mostly it probably has to be the mentor doing the choosing. The mentor sees potential and wants to encourage it. I have to say that I think most of what Andy refers to isn’t actually mentoring, I don’t think in-service workshops and sharing materials are mentoring. Mentoring is a relationship between two people with different levels of experience, but similar goals and ideals. It isn’t about money, workshops, or formal training seminars . . . it is about give and take, about sharing experience and ideas pertinent to specific situations and problems. I don’t think it is about methodology or worksheets.
I agree with Karenne, that professional associations are very useful places to learn new things, but it is hardly the same as having a mentor.
Andy asks “What’s in it for us?” and there is no ONE answer to that, and for Andy there seems to be little in it for him. For me there is something different in it each time, depending on the person I am mentoring, and there is always the opportunity to examine what I do, and think about whether my teaching ‘habits’ really serve the best interest of my students or not. I think mentoring keeps me from getting complacent, and that alone is reason enough to keep doing it, for me.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I agree with Paula. I wouldn’t want to mentor someone straight off their Cert because I don’t think I could gain anything from it, but I might be interested in mentoring someone who was mentoring someone straight off their Cert, and etc.
Practically, the lowest tech way of making it work would be to have a forum especially for it with people saying what they are looking for on the forum and then PMing each other if they think they have a match? What do you think?
March 14th, 2010 at 4:28 am
Thisi dea of mentoring newly qualified TEFLers seems to be a relatively new concept. In the first instance, I would go with the “Nobody mentored me, why should I mentor anybody?” crowd. As DOS however, I have often organised teacher support sessions and workshops during my paid working time, because it was always qute clear that the TEFL or CELTA courses or whatever, had left a job pretty much half done – but that’s still not the same kind of thing, is it? I don’t want to be branded as a cynic, but now, even though I’m basically retired and would have the time, I still take college students through their MAs and PhDs, and they pay me for it. So why not the CELTA grads? So when Louise talks about ‘professional’ help, does she specifically mean the paying kind? Or does she want a dedicated mentoring forum to beset up by volunteers?
I think that plenty of free help, if asked the right way, can be got from forums like TEFL.net – see the excellent help forum run by Lucy at http://www.tefl.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=2