Combining Teacher Training and Mentoring for Collaborative Professional Development

ELT ConferenceCali, Colombia, 2010

Professional development challenges

Reflective practice

Language awareness

Professional development challenges for the non-native speaking teacher

Reflecting on their practice and exploring new alternatives.

Keeping up and enhancing their English proficiency.

Challenges for Directors of Studies/Academic Supervisors

Developing themselves as leaders.

Leading the teachers under their supervision to develop themselves.

Teacher concerns

For novice teachers: Lesson preparation takes long because

there are so many variables to consider.

For experienced teachers: Planning and teaching on auto-pilot

can be boring for the pilot.

The teacher may use old ideas and materials again and again.

Teacher concerns

Both novice and experienced teachers’ concerns:

Repertoires and sequences of activities may be used without exploring the beliefs and assumptions about learning and teaching that govern the teacher’s choices.

Teachers’ concerns about their language proficiency:

Their knowledge of the underlying systems of the language that enables them to teach effectively.

The need to explore the richness and complexity of language by examining features of language and studying how language works.

Roles of theDirector of Studies

Leader

Mentor

Coach

Advisor

Facilitator

Develops himself/herself.

Inspires others.

Helps them achieve the best they can in their own terms.

Builds a relationship of trust and self-development.

Gets people to want to do things by appealing to values and beliefs.

Facilitates change, innovation.

Builds a network of professional support.

A leader

Offers support, challenge, patience and enthusiasm while he guides mentees to new levels of competence.

Brings out the best in mentees so they become themselves.

Discusses lessons in a non-judgemental way.

Helps mentees find the origins of their actions.

A mentor

Provides teachers with a framework to examine the teaching experience and work on targets for the next experience

A coach

Helps teachers look critically at their own teaching.

An advisor

Gives them strategies to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Helps teachers to identify their ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development).

A facilitator

Provides scaffolding for them to move forward and internalize new ideas, concepts and skills.

The Teacher Iceberg

Professional behavior

Planning Reviewing

Selecting and/or learning

Knowledge about: students, language Form and use, activities, process skills

Conceptualizations of: education, teaching, learning, professionalism, language-learning,

language, language policy

Feelings, beliefs, attitudes, values

Lang

uage

knowledge

profi

cien

cy

and

SchoolEducational system

Culture

Society

Mentor CoursesAngi Malderez and Caroline Bodoczky,

1999

The four-column analysis

STEPS CHUNKS ASSUMPTIONS/ BELIEFS ARCHAEOLOGY

T greets S/S and asks them to share one positive thing that happened to them during the weekend.

Setting atmosphere.

T believes this helps students relax. Learning is enhanced if S/S are relaxed.

T learned this at teacher training college.

T writes lesson menu on B/B.

Lead-in. T believes this gives a sense of structure to S/S. They know what the teacher is doing.

T learned this in a workshop she attended.

The four-column analysis

STEPS CHUNKS ASSUMPTIONS/ BELIEFS ARCHAEOLOGY

T asks S/S to look at coursebook pictures and elicits vocabulary.

Pre-reading. T believes this activates background knowledge and helps S/S predict content. This enhances comprehension.

T learned this at teacher training college.

Language awareness task

Read the article Buenos Aires: A City’s Power and Promise by Daniel Politi. Notice chunks of language that might be useful to talk about Argentina’s history, geography, politics. Are there facts about our past that you didn’t know? List all the opportunities/benefits that foreigners find in our country. Learn about the expatriates’ lives in Buenos Aires. Where are they from? What jobs or businesses do they have in Buenos Aires?

A reflection

“TEACHING AND LEARNING IS A LIFELONG PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT OR A CLASS, OR A DAY AT SCHOOL. ONE DOES NOT JUST SIMPLY BECOME A GREAT TEACHER; ONE SIMPLY COMMITS TO IT AS A PATH.”Eric Jensen, 1995

Bibliography

• Malderez, Angi and Bodoczky, Caroline, Mentor Courses, Cambridge 1999.

• O’Connor, Joseph, Leading with NLP, 1998.

• Randall, Mick, Advising and Supporting Teachers, Cambridge 2001.

• Shalaway, Linda, Learning to Teach, Scholastic, 2005.

• Wallace, Michael, Training Foreign Language Teachers, Cambridge, 1991.

• Woodward, Tessa, Planning Lessons and Courses, Cambridge, 2001.

Thank you!

May your pursuit of professional excellence be rewarding and filled with happy times!

Eleonora Salas – madoeleonora@yahoo.com