Our fourth guest in the Mentoring System series is Pınar Filizli, who has been working as a staffroom mentor since the second semester of the previous academic year. Filizli states that she finds the experience of being a staff mentor rewarding since she believes that having a chance to provide support for the mentees and exchanging ideas with them about a variety of classroom issues and activities have contributed to her own teaching practice, experience, and personal and professional development. She says that she didn't have many problems about the new system because most of the responsibilities she had to take on as a staffroom mentor and how she was expected to fulfill them were covered during the sessions in the training program for mentors.
For the difficulties of the mentoring program, however, she states a few points: "Last semester, I had to allocate some of my free time to certain issues related to my new status, which sometimes caused some time constraints for my other duties and daily routines. For instance, arranging weekly meetings in particular and having to go over the lesson plans more than once were challenges I faced due to the hectic schedule my mentees and I had at school. This sometimes hindered my own classroom practice and other duties I took on in the institution, and limited the time we allocated for weekly meetings."
Nevertheless, she still emphasizes the fact that the whole mentoring process is an exciting, fruitful and satisfying experience for the parties involved as it gives everyone a chance to question, analyze and change different aspects of teaching practices.
More to come about the mentoring system soon... Keep following us!
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