Getting a Mentoring Program Started

As a grad student at CSUH in 1992, I was stunned (and thrilled) to discover that by taking one class in theory and being accepted by some mysterious, informal process, I would be given a class of my own to teach. This class consisted of 12 students and came with a fully developed course syllabus that included specific reading and writing assignments, intricately scheduled grammar and vocabulary lessons, quizzes, and exams. All I had to do was figure out, on my own, how to teach it!

Now as then, grad students teach in a program called the Intensive Learning Experience (ILE), which has its funding tied to the grad student program. This program is a series of developmental courses for incoming freshmen with 12 students in a class. Since we have a remediation rate of over 60% for incoming freshman, we have a lot of these courses. Grad students have not, so far, been permitted to teach freshman comp or advanced comp except in special cases. In addition, it's important to understand that these are not TAs (Teaching Assistants-- which implies that they are assisting a teacher); they are the teachers of record for classes of their own.

When I began teaching in the ILE program, we didn't get our syllabus and teaching materials until a few days before the quarter started, so we didn't have to "worry" much about preparation. All the sections of the classes were supposed to be exactly the same; unfortunately, the more experienced grad student teachers in the program tended to disregard the prepared syllabus, which the rest of us were using and teach whatever they wanted to teach. In addition, the professors who taught freshman comp apparently had no interest in us except as students, so we usually didn't even have the benefit of the more experienced help. We also had virtually no support from the department as the composition director was also the department chairman, and one year, she was the faculty senate president; although she did her best, she was simply not able to spend much time with the grad student teachers. It was definitely sink or swim, and while I swam, having been a teacher of one sort or another for over 20 years, many of the others sank, quickly and quietly.

Obviously, this was not the most supportive environment for developing teachers, so during that time, some of us started an informal mentoring program to help the incoming grad students: voluntarily, a grad student who felt insecure about plunging into teaching was encouraged by her peers to approach an experienced grad-student teacher and ask to sit in on a class for part or all of a quarter. I mentored a number of times as a grad student, and I felt that I had learned more about teaching while mentoring than ever before; in other words, I felt I received a lot more than I had given.

Even that program, however, fell by the wayside with the advent of two temporary composition directors over two years. When a permanent coordinator was finally hired for the composition department, one of the first things that came up was improving the teacher-training program. I mentioned our defunct informal mentoring, and Dr. Alison Warriner, our new composition coordinator, was enthusiastic about working on a mentor program, and we began working toward one to add to the teacher preparation program she is developing. The result is this mentor program. We were able to get a grant to research and set it up. Last year, Dr. Warriner and I were able to give the students who participated in the mentor program independent study units, and next year, we hope to offer a supervised course with its own course number.

As you can see by the main module, the program has been very successful, and I look forward to continuing to work with it. Because I am part time faculty, of course, there is no remuneration after the grant expires for coordinating this program; I do it because I love it and because I think it is so important

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