It has taken me a while to think of myself as a teacher who has something to offer to other teachers. In many ways I am still very young and inexperienced, and there’s no shame in admitting that – it would be a greater mistake to pretend otherwise! Yet at the same time, I’ve come to a point in my career where I’ve made enough mistakes and experienced a broad enough range of situations that I actually do have some things of value to pass on to pre-service and early-career teachers. That’s why I’m excited about ment2teach, a new initiative launched by Jennifer Michalski.
Among other things, ment2teach is a space and a platform to facilitate mentoring relationships between teachers. I know how important mentoring is – I was incredibly fortunate to have spent my first six years teaching in a faculty where basically all the staff took it upon themselves to mentor me in one form or another – and I believe it’s one of the best ways to learn. Life’s too short to learn from your own mistakes – if you want to get anywhere, you need to piggyback on the experience of others.
Apart from offering myself as one of the mentors there, I’m also contributing to the ment2teach’s blog. In fact, my post there – “The missing ingredient” – is the first one published on the site. It’s the first in a series, and over the next two weeks I’ll be posting the rest. Happy reading!
Wootube 