Master of Arts in Foreign Languages graduate, Cristina M. Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid, experienced what many graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) deal with on a regular basis when they’re about to begin life on the other side of the classroom: she hadn’t been trained. This sparked an idea for her master’s thesis, which would eventually be titled “Self-study: A new type of reversible mentorship for foreign language graduate teaching assistants.” The thesis provided a mentoring option, based in self-study methodology combined with technology that could be used with GTA programs. Before she could begin, she needed a faculty member that would serve as her mentor and work with her on her thesis as the other half of the study.
Enter, Dr. Esperanza Roman-Mendoza.
“I met Esperanza while taking her social media in teaching and research course,” Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid said. “I accepted an offer to teach Spanish as a teaching assistant at Mason and, at the time, the Department of Modern and Classical Languages didn’t offer formal training for TAs. Esperanza agreed to be the director of my master’s degree thesis in order to explore how self-study combined with the use of technology could be used in mentorship initiatives.”
The study culminated with Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid and Dr. Roman-Mendoza co-authoring a chapter in the book, “Polyvocal Professional Learning through Self-Study Research,” with the chapter titled “A Technology-Enhanced Self-Study of Reversible Mentorship in a Modern Language Program.” While the chapter discusses the finer details of their study, it also shows the impact it had on their individual experiences as teachers.
In education, self-study is used to help teachers examine their teaching practices so they can improve them in the future. To do this, an instructor needs at least one “critical friend” who they trust to review their work and provide constructive criticism. Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid decided to apply this to GTA mentorship.
The study was held during two academic terms in 2012 while Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid was a teaching assistant for Dr. Roman-Mendoza’s class. Their major goal was to improve their teaching by examining the challenges each one faced and seeing how they could support each other’s efforts. The two communicated through documented online and face-to-face communications. The study examined three different points: “one, self-study as a methodology in exploring mentorship and training programs for TAs. Two, self-study as a tool for reciprocal mentorship and professional development of mentees and mentors. And three, technology for facilitating and promoting collaborative reflection of the mentor-mentee relationship – all in an effort to ultimately improve their teaching practices and students’ learning.”
Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid and Dr. Roman-Mendoza logged all of their online communications on a weekly basis throughout the spring and summer academic terms. They also met every two weeks to further discuss their teaching. To track what they were discussing and when, Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid and Dr. Roman-Mendoza coded each of their messages and broke them down into categories of instructional (interaction with students, student responsibility, student learning needs, study skills), organizational (tasks such as class preparation and organization, commenting on how long grading took, student grades, course deadlines), and personal (feelings such as frustration, worries, lack of enthusiasm, satisfaction, joy). By the end of the summer term, the two had contributed a total of 46 blog entries, 21 blog comments, and 350 emails.
Once the study was completed, they found that combining self-study and technology was powerful for mentorship between graduate students and professors who wish to benefit from a critical friendship. More importantly, their means of communication allowed for the tracking of both improvements in their teaching and the development of their relationship.
“When I first started my GTA work, I didn’t have a mentor, and I didn’t have someone who could help me, support me, give me feedback,” Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid said. “Esperanza is my mentor but she’s also my critical friend in my self-study.”
For Dr. Roman-Mendoza, it changed the way she saw the mentorship dynamic. “I directed two master’s theses many years ago and it was more about how I could help them with the language, picking resources, writing a question and doing the research to defend the thesis,” she said. “This project changed the way I see the relationship between the TA and professor. It also made me realize how much I can learn from a dialogue with somebody who is also struggling to become a teacher, or just a better teacher.”
Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid also added, “this mentorship greatly contributed to my growth as a teacher. I became much more proactive when facing teaching challenges. Having someone that is more experienced assisting you definitely helps you gain confidence, grow skills, and develop professionally. Teaching assistants need guidance from mentors and university programs should have initiatives to support them.”
Hernandez Gil de Lamadrid currently serves as an instructor of World Languages and Cultures at American University.
April 02, 2019
