When I taught online, I also had several remarkable mentors. My first mentor was my trainer. His name was Patrick. He guided me and taught me my first LMS and he was always available by email and by phone. Every time I emailed him, he responded right away. When he responded right away, I felt like he really cared about his students. We had chemistry and taking his faculty training class and dealing with him for my first year at my first online school experience was a lot of fun.
At my first online school, I took all the Professional Development classes they offered. I met many teachers and found even more experienced mentors to tell me about the student population, how to grade online, how to give feedback online, how to transfer my face to face teaching skills to an online environment, and how to create engaging class material online.
I met even more teacher mentors in the teacher forums. Since I was new to online teaching, I got to meet teachers from all over the country of all ages and of all backgrounds. Some of these teachers are still my friends to this day and we daily let our hair down to talk about family, good times, and bad times. Just like my face to face teaching mentor, my online teaching mentors opened a whole new world of online teaching for me, and I am forever grateful that they are still my friends today.
When I started to teach at my second online school and started teaching my first full time online job, I had a mentor named Courtney. We became fast friends. We spent long hours on the phone. She was from the mid-west and I was from the East Coast. Like Patrick, she taught me about what the students at the university was like, she taught me the new LMS of that online university, she taught me all the teaching tricks of the trade just like my face to face teaching mentor did.
After 5 years on the job with her, she left online teaching to pursue another career. I am forever grateful that my online school had a mentor program in place since Courtney was assigned to me by the school. She was a blast to work with during our time together. She helped me get promoted from adjunct to full time.
Just like with my face to face job, it is important to have a teacher mentor you can get along with to teach you the tricks of the trade. It is important to form that trusting bond so you can not be afraid to let your hair down. A good mentor looks after her mentee's back. She is willing to stick her neck out for you and be there for you when the chips are down. If I get sick, or have questions, or make a mistake, a good mentor is caring, understanding, nurturing and accepting no matter what. A good mentor knows how to solve newbie problems without making the newbie feel small or threatened with being fired. A good mentor values friendship over everything else. When I get a good mentor like that, it is an honor to have her as my life long friend.
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