As the end of 2023 approaches, I have decided to write about something a little bit lighter and something I am extremely grateful for here : mentoring. I have been lucky enough to meet wonderful educators (I totally fangirl in front of Claire Kramsch when I met her at a conference in Doha in 2019) and some of them, two in particular, became two important pillars of my life as a teacher.
Mentoring is, first of all, a relationship. There’s no « one size fits all ». It’s deeply personal. It’s not about rescuing nor correcting, it’s not providing a solution either. It’s not necessarily love at first sight, boundaries might be set to ensure a honest relationship. Realities must be respected. It has some many good intentions but it can be tricky especially without acknowledging our own strength, as a mentee and a mentor, and this will ultimately make the difference.
I met my first mentor at Yale University: Betsy was teaching Business Writing English and I was her TA. We collaborated a summer, we designed an entire curriculum together, we co-taught an international cohort together. I realized, while working with her, that I was under estimating my capacities constantly, that I was apologizing for my own ideas (imposter syndrome anyone?) and that in my case, feedback was a very important element of mentoring. It’s hard to be give honest feedback, but without, the damage can be way worse and mistakes can worsen dramatically.
I started to stand up for who I was and how I was seeing the world. It’s not that easy to get good at learning from anyone, it takes a lot of insight, but I am not reinventing the wheel when I say that growth takes time.
I met my second mentor at the school I am currently teaching at. She was Head of Department, had been for several years, and I was just teaching a few classes, we had only a handful of students in common. She helped me see things through a different perspective. I got promoted as HoD quickly, in the middle of the pandemic, if that wasn’t stressful enough. Our Director of Studies was nowhere to be found and I felt like I was carrying the entire future of the department on my very own shoulders (yeah, and I was pregnant, too. And writing a dissertation thesis). All I had was my mentor who was showing up and demonstrating her presence daily.
Genevieve was bringing her identity to her classroom, she was straightforward with her students and colleagues, she was ready to celebrate anybody’s successes as long as nobody was poking fun at someone being down. She was the first to tell me to visualize what I needed for myself. It sounds silly, but it was not for me at that time. I survived that first year of hell thanks to her. She was diagnosed with cancer that year and left school shortly after.
A strong mentoring relationship doesn’t end because the doors of the school closed down: in our particular case, I still exchange dozens of texts with her per week, if not per day. Just showing up is an important element of mentoring that she taught me, and I won’t forget it anytime soon. It’s funny to think how my vision was shaped thanks to these two. I haven’t lost contact with Betsy, but she is in America and deals with a lot so we exchange texts at Christmas, basically. It’s okay if the relationship changes and evolves, that’s also a part of mentoring.
I do not really understand why mentoring is not developed more in France. I remembered talking about this with my students, who were basically astonished that such a relationship could exist for real. I wish early career teachers could benefit from mentoring. There’s a lot of disillusion among young teachers now, it would be a lie to say that the first year goes smoothly for most people. It might not be the best solution, but it’s better than doing nothing and watching promising early career teachers just dropping out because they can’t handle the pressure, or the work environment, among other things.
Right through my journey 