Developing as an instructor through peer mentoring
I have found the best way to develop my skills is to create mentoring relationships with terrific instructors. I am fairly new to teaching and have a great passion, but feel I am in the infancy stages of my instructional professionalism. Spending time with confident, experienced faculty helps me to pick up their good habits and build my own sense of professionalism in the classroom.
Kelly, I am also I a novice to teaching and have had the unfortunate experience of being in a team teaching environment where I felt like a third spoke in the wheel. It was very frustrating not to have had a mentor who could have faciltated me during my first year of teaching. Though I learned a lot through my own personal exposure to the classroom and students, I believe I would have been more productive if I had a mentor to advise me. I now have a skeptical view of teaching and my abilities, though I still have the passion.
I have changed facilties and took a more limited classroom teaching position with more management and clinical requirements.
Hi Ann,
I am a first year instructor. Before I started I spent some time with a great instructor who had taught the class before. He helped me prepare and gave me a lot of great advice. I would agree completely with your method to develop your skills. Being a first year instructor I feel that I have so much to learn. My question to you is how do you deal with conflicting viewpoints from different instructors? How do you know which is the 'right' way?
Hi Ann,
What a great professional development plan you have created for yourself. You are going to be a great instructor because you want to learn from others and are on the lookout for ways to be better each time you teach.
Gary
