Speed mentoring
While listening to a recent Radio 3 programme on Speed Dating with a Thinker, it occured to me that the speed dating format would make for a great break from workshops at a TEFL conference, and also maybe help people find mentors.
Each person has to come with a question or problem (e.g. “What’s the best book about…?” “How should I…?” or “What can you tell me about…?”) and they go around swapping questions and answers, noting down people who they wouldn’t mind mentoring with again at the end, to be matched up if it works out that way.
Alternatively, and closer to the original, each person comes with a piece of advice for all teachers and the people they speak to question them further or challenge them on them, then vote and match up.
Worth a try? Any other ideas to compete with Pecha Kucha for breaking up the tedium of wandering past the book stands again to be asked to mingle in yet another workshop? Any other thoughts on mentoring? Have your say:
March 5th, 2010 at 3:24 am
PS
Click on the Mentoring category above for plenty more on the topic
March 5th, 2010 at 8:26 am
I always think back to a famous Woody Allen quote:
‘I took a course on speed reading, I read ‘War and peace’ in 20 minutes. Apparently, it’s about Russia.’
March 5th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I recently came across the idea of Open Space Technology (OST). Terrible name, but quite an interesting idea (and nothing to do with technology).
It’s a way of organising meetings or conferences, but without the usual elements of organisation i.e. a fixed agenda, list of sessions, speakers, and so on. It’s a way of letting participants decide the agenda, form groups and sub-groups, take part in spntaneous breakout sessions… sounds chaotic, but there’s a clear procedure involved, as well as a role for facilitators.
The IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group (www.tdsig.org), of which I’m a committee member, was planning an event based on this approach here in Barcelona, but it had to be cancelled due to lack of interest.
This was probably due to the novelty of the idea and the fact that there’s no “big name” speaker to pull a crowd. We’ve not been put off, though, and will give it another go in the future.
You can read more about the idea here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
March 6th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Actually, that should have been http://tdsig.org. Sorry!
March 8th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I’ve just posted some information about the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group (http://tdsig.org) Pre-Conference Event, which will be taking place at Harrogate, on 7 April 2010.
We’ll be using Open Space Technology to organise the discussion about “ELT, life, the universe and everything”. Hopefully, that covers it all!
You can read more about it, including a schedule of sorts (bearing in mind the nature of OST) here: http://tdsig.org/2010/03/pre-conference-event-using-open-space-technology/