Blogging and Teacher Mentoring

After reflecting on the possible uses of blogs and the like, it dawned on me that this tool can be used not only with students but with student teachers who need supervision and mentoring. Let me explain the idea with my personal experience:

Let me start by telling you that at the bi-national center I work for, Centro Culutral Costarricense-Norteamericano, whose Web page is www.centrocultural.cr, we have a series of modules for our student teachers. The idea of having this mentoring modules is to help newly hired or senior teachers continue developing their teaching style and follow our teaching philosophy, TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching), which is also known as TBI (Task-Based Instruction).

Since teacher mentors cannot get together with all his/her supervisees at the same time due to our different working/teaching shifts, blogging could be a great tool to have mentors and teachers interact among themselves and comment on what is happening with their day-to-day teaching. Furthermore, mentors can monitor the supervisees' postings and comments to create a kind of comradeship among all members in his/her team, because it is probable that all language teachers may have experienced or experiment similar teaching situations or scenarios. Perhaps, fellow teachers can also have pieces of advice for their colleagues as well as their mentors. Their individual blogs can be a way to solve teaching situations they are not sure how to handle.

Blogging can become a great way of sharing their particulars when teaching, but also it can be an excellent way, for student or senior teachers, to document their achievements, reflections on situations they experienced in various classes with different levels, and so on. In this way, not only can the teacher mentors assist their supervisees, but also fellow teachers can become a source of feedback and suggestions when facing any given situation in class that affects classroom management, language learning, lesson planning, etc.

Let us conclude by saying that different schedules or distances to commute to come to meetings are not things that can become an obstacle to mentor and assist teachers. Through blogging, it can be a nice way to be not only in touch with your teacher mentor, if you have one, but also a nice way to share your experiences with fellow teachers. And how about all the wonderful material that is accessible through the Internet that we simple do not know that exists but can be provided by your colleagues? I am sure that in terms of education, blogging is bound to have endless applications in the near future.