Webinar with Angi Malderez

One of the most exciting features of the mentoring EVO session is face-to-face conversations with great educators. It was only about 6 months ago that I first met Angi at a training course in Iraq. It was a great learning experince ad I was very happy to have to opportunity to meet her in person after years of reading and using her work on mentoring in my own professional development.

And now you have this chance, too. Angi has kindly agreed to join us for a conversation about mentoring and her latest research which focuses on implementing mentoring strategies that eliminate one of the key obstacles to success with mentoring, the phenomenon she calls "judgementoring".

I believe this webinar promises to be a great opporuntity to learn with one of the most influential researchers and educators in the field of ELT mentoring.

The event will take place in Blackboard Collaborate on 11th February 2014 at 4PM GMT.
(Click here for your local time.)

Angi wrote one of the most influencial books on mentoring in the early 1990s with Caroline Bodóczky (who was one of the speakers on our very first webinar, you can find a recording of the webinar  here.)

If you don't know this book yet, check it out on Google Books.

We really hope you will be able to join us.

MENTORING MAKES A DIFFERENCE-Electronic Village Online: 10 Ways to Be a Good Mentor: A Challenge by Fabiana Casella

After doing some research and reading the articles suggested by EVO Mentoring Team, I realized that most of the characteristics a good mentor must have do not differ much from the ones that make an excellent educator.

It is not easy to choose just two of all the attributes out of the ten, but I would like to say that the first one can be that a mentee needs her mentor to be a Role Model: a mentee can learn a lot just by watching her mentor manage different situations, that is to say to lead by example.

The second characteristic can be to Be Genuinely Interested in The Mentee as an individual, to really care about the mentee, who is eager to listen to the comments and hang on to the mentor´s guide or thoughts.

Most of us in the group agreed on the fact that mentoring goes both ways: we teach others and we learn from them as well. Two more features I would like to add, are Commitment and Patience. Mentees as well as students, need their mentor to be there  watching them grow, and understand that sometimes they may stumble and fall, but, like in any learning process, one must take into consideration that there are ups and downs, too.

I do believe educators are natural mentors when they are:

When a person should be mentored is an interesting question. Honestly, I think one of the possible answers could be, whenever that person needs it: when he/she is new to a job, like teaching or even when he/she wants to move forward in her career.

We were asked for some suggestions for new Mentors and Mentees. Here is some addition to the rich bibliography given by the Mentoring Group: a compendium of the most relevant characteristics of a mentor, provided by the NEA Creating a Teacher Mentor Program:

10 Ways to be a Good Mentor - A challenge

Hello everyone!

Mentoring have always fascinated us! We've written about it,  experienced being  mentees many times in our lives and we have also mentored a lot of people along our careers as educators. Actually, we love mentoring!

Have you read the text  posted on our FB group called  10 ways to be a good mentor ? We would very much appreciate to have your contributions  either here on our blog or on our FB group.

We would love to challenge you with some questions:

1. Which of the ten skills mentioned in the text  do you consider to be the two most important? 
2. Apart from what is mentioned in the text , what other skills should a mentor have? Why?
3. Are educators natural mentors? 
4. In what situations should people  be mentored? Why?
5. Do you have any suggestions for new mentors and  mentees? 

You can make comments ,  add some other skills a mentor need  ( based on you experience or on the literature upon the theme ) or make nay kind of contributions regarding mentoring

You can find some good readings about mentoring on our  ELT mentoring Pinterest  and you can post some other  reading sources there to be shared.

Feel free to make comments, discuss on our FB group and preferably to write a blog post to be posted on our blog . ( 300 to 500 words ).  Just let us know if you wish to blog here and we'll tell you how to do it.

Last but not least, remember:

Happy mentoring!

Cheers!

The mentoring team ! 

How I became a mentor.

At beginning of my career as a teacher I  worked at a  respectful language institute for almost 18 years  .  I will never forget   how I was anxious , a bit lost and scared:  new challenges and audience  I was a about to face,  rich students , demanding parents and a lot of competition at the workplace.

I remember the feeling I had when I entered the teacher's room: So much books, flashcards , materials, games, a single electric typewriter , a copy machine and no one to tell me what to do with all of those wonderful things !

                                                photo by Jeffrey Doonan  taken form ELT pics

Well, it happened about 27 years ago and I had the sensation as if I  was a little child looking  bottom up at at high magical book case , full of books in a time when I was not tall enough to pick one of them or wise enough to understand what was written.

photo by Vicky Loras from ELT pics 

Yes, there was no technology, I was 23,   I had  my  1st graduation ,  I was doing another graduation at the university  and having a lot of Cambridge training to become a better teacher. Still, I missed someone. I missed a mentor. I needed one!

Photo taken from http://goo.gl/QgKkEX

As Emily Dickinson says : "Hope is a bird that perches in the soul, sings melodies with no words and never stops though".  Out of the blue she was there: That tall , beautiful and talkative and very experienced woman ,  a teacher doing her Ph.D and  about to become a professor at the university.   When she saw me looking for things and very uncomfortable to ask any questions, she simply said: "Hey, do you have time? I'll be here at lunch time, we have this big break and then I can show everything and how to request , do, ask, use, school policy regarding report cards and such and such. OMG! I felt so blessed! It was a wonderful day. And from that day on I promised I'd do it with any novice or new teacher who started at that school. And it worked  so well! I have loads of stories I could share later , but not now. 

What about you? Do you have any stories you've experienced as a mentor or mentee? Would you like to share your experiences with us?  

Please , leave your comments and feel free to write a blog post.  Remember mentoring has all to do with caring and sharing. 

Let's  share?  I'd love to know about you and learn from you!  

 If you need any further information on how  to blog here, visit us on our FB  group ELT Mentoring  . You can also  follow us on Twitter and visit our FB page 

Happy Mentoring! 

JOIN US FOR OUR NEXT WEBMINAR

Dear everyone, 



We are glad to invite you to our next webinar on Mon 27th Jan at 4PM GCT - 3 you! Check your time zone here

We are looking forward to meeting you!


Happy Mentoring! 

Moderators Team 

You can enjoy the recording of the first webinar we held on 15th January, 2014.

Thanks to all who have participated in this fantastic event. I was deeply honoured to be part of this.

Introductions: Jo Gakonga

We are very excited to have Jo on the #mentorevo session. Here's her introduction for you to enjoy.

Your first task

We are very excited to have so many wonderful teachers signing up for this session and we are very much looking forward to learning with you.

As your fist task, we would like you to spend a little time filling out this questionnaire.





This will help you consider some aspects of mentoring and give us some food for thought and discussion for the next few weeks.

We are looking forward to reading and discussing your responses.

Have a great weekend.

A great interview with a mentor

I have only recently come across The Amazing Teacher Podcast. Every episode I have listened to so far has a lot of relevance to #mentoring.
This however is definitely one you would find interesting and useful. Great conversation about how mentors can help young teachers avoid burnout and keep up their enthusiasm.

Danielle Mizuta is the State lead mentor with the Hawaii Department of Education Teacher Leadership Institute. (Find her on Twitter here.)
Let us know what you think.

#mentorevo love - 2 Wordles

We are in the middle of the registration week and it's been heartywarming to see the number of people signing up and showing interest in mentoring.

It was also exciting to see the names and all the places participants have come from, so here's a worlde of those, too.

Valerie's Introduction

+Valerie Jakar's Prezi gives you a tiny peek at her passion for teacher education for over 30 years. We are very excited to have her on the #mentoerevo team.

Maizie's Introduction

+Maizie Avihayil created a wonderful Glog to introduce herself. Have a look.



(If you can't see the poster, click here to find it.)

Happy new year - Are you ready for #mentorevo?

The official sign-up is starting tomorrow. We are looking forward to talking about mentoring with you.

Have a great new year.

These are some characteristics of mentors

Which do you find the most important, do you have any examples of you needing these skills and characteristics?

Roseli's Introduction

Debbie's Introduction

Watch the lovely introduction one of our coordinators Debora Tebovich prepared for Mentoring EVO 2014.

You can find out more about Debbie by checking out her blog or following her on Google+ and Twitter.

We are very excited to have Debbie with us on the EVO from beautiful Argentina.

Our first real-time event

We are very excited to confirm that our first real-time event will take place on Blackboard collaborate and our partners will be the brand new Mentoring Special Interest Group of IATEFL Hungary.

Hungary has been a hotbed for mentoring in ELT. Caroline Bodoczky and Angi Malderez started their work on mentor courses in the early 1990s in Hungary when they worked with some of the pioneers of English Language Teaching in Hungary. Their book for mentor courses has been an essential part of in- and pre-service professional development courses ever since.

Since then mentoring as a means of professional development has been a very important component of training courses in Hungary.

Hundreds of novice English teachers have taken part in mentor courses in Hungary, which eventually led to the creation of a Special Interest Group in IATEFL Hungary with the support of two champions of mentoring in Hungary: Judit Revesz and Uwe Pohl.

We invited the Mentoring SIG to share their experiences with organising, conducting and being participants of mentoring courses.

Some of the topics we are going to discuss with them:
1. Why mentoring?
2. How did it start?
3. What has kept it going?
4. What are the aims of the SIG?
5. How can mentoring be integrated into one's personal and professional development agenda?

We will also have trainers and participants from mentor courses share their experiences, and some anecdotes.

A bonus is that the Mentor SIG will sign in from the American Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, thanks to the generous support of the Regional English Language Office, especially George M. Chinnery and Gergő Sántha. (They are also on Facebook)

We hope you will be able to join  us if you have any questions or comments, leave a comment and we'll make sure to ask them at the event.

Welcome

We are very excited to welcome you to one of the online spaces we will use in our new Mentoring EVO session in 2014.

Before the action kicks in in earners on 13th January, you can sign up for the session here, you can find our Facebook Page here and our Facebook Group here.

This blog is run by the whole team and we we encourage participants to share their reflections and their answers to the weekly discussions here. We are very happy to host mentoring related-guest posts from present and past EVO participants and anyone with a shared passion for mentoring in ELT.

Our first (get-to-know you) task is to tell us

3	things everyone needs to know about you
2	things only few people know about you
1	reason for joining the mentoring EVO session

Here's Tamas's introduction from last year as a taster.

You can use any platform or technical solution from pen and paper to shooting your own video.
If you need help, let us know: mentor.evo@gmail.com.