Improving Language Education Through Mentoring

Leyla Lobos
Manuel Lara
Marion Durbahn

lklobos@uc.cl
manuel.laradiaz@hotmail.com
mariondurbahn@hotmail.com

Leyla Lobos is a teacher at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. She holds a degree in Education and a Masters in Linguistics. She has vast experience in teaching at all levels and she has been a teacher trainer for the past five years. She has recently become involved in mentoring.

Manuel Lara Manuel Lara is a teacher at USACH and Universidad Autónoma de Chile. He has experience in teaching students from different educational backgrounds and language proficiency levels. He has been a teacher trainer since 2006 and is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Linguistics. He became involved in mentoring in January.

Marion Durbahn is a teacher at Universidad Autonoma. She has been involved in teacher training since 2007 and in mentoring since December, 2008. She has worked with students of different socio-economical backgrounds and levels of English. Currently, she is taking a postgraduate course in Linguistics at Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT

Improving language education through mentoring. This workshop aims at sharing our project on the implementation of a mentoring program in Chile. Mentoring is a form of professional and personal relationship in which a more experienced educator provides guidance to less experienced teachers so as to promote effective practices in the classroom. Many newly qualified teachers often feel overwhelmed by their poor teaching performance and their incapability of transferring their knowledge of theory into practice. It is during their first years of experience when new teachers need more support from other professionals in the teaching field. In the case of Chile, it is proven that new teachers (0-3 years’ experience) have the poorest performance according to the recent studies on the subject. Therefore, mentoring appears as a good opportunity to support them by taking advantage of experience, in order to explore beliefs, to build a community through support, to smooth the transition from being student-teacher to teacher and to promote reflection. This will allow personal growth by sharing knowledge and experience. As a result of the implementation of a mentoring program, the school system will have more committed, creative, reflective, critical, flexible, open-minded, proactive, collaborative and accountable teachers. In this workshop, we will explore the benefits of mentoring at various levels of the school system, focusing on the development of mentoring skills from a very interactive and reflective perspective. For that, participants are invited to really experience what being a mentor is through different activities that include active listening, rapport building, noticing, scaffolding, self-reflection and collaborative work. Finally, we will reflect on the importance of acquiring those skills in order to become a successful mentor and encourage teachers to be part of this process.

Improving Language Education Through Mentoring

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df2sx395_77fmm494cf