English Language Arts
Teacher Educators

2021–2022 ELATE Mentoring Program for Early and Mid-Career Scholars

English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) is set to begin another year of our online mentoring program for early career and mid-career scholars—from advanced graduate students to pre-tenure faculty members to tenured associate professors—whose teaching and/or research pertains to English language arts education. Although there are certainly unique challenges in this current environment, together we can support one another with hope-filled pathways forward. We hope that by pairing a junior person with a more experienced one, we will offer an opportunity for professional growth for both participants, as well as a way to make the ELATE community stronger. You can contribute to this effort in two ways:  

1. Respond by November 2, 2021, with your name and information as requested below. Please be sure to indicate what level of mentoring program you would like to participate in (early career, mid-career) and whether you’ll be a mentee, mentor, or, potentially, both.
2. Share this information with those in your network who may be interested.
   

Nominate an early career scholar or volunteer to mentor!

ELATE is offering early career and mid-career scholars in English language arts education the opportunity to be paired with an experienced ELATE faculty member who will serve as an online mentor for the 2021–22 academic year. By serving as a mentor, you can support an emerging scholar by providing thoughtful responses to questions, suggesting useful resources, and sharing how you’ve responded to the range of challenges presented by our profession—and especially the current moment. Through consultation with a mentor, the early career or mid-career English language arts educator can expand a network of professional contacts, which supports growth. 

Here’s how it works:  

• Email siebenn@oldwestbury.edu with a note saying you’re interested in serving as a mentor or becoming a mentee. In that email, describe the kind of institution where you work or are planning to work (e.g., small liberal arts, large research); the kind of department where you serve or are planning to serve (e.g., department of teacher education, English department); your research focus or interests; and anything else about your personal or professional circumstances that would help us make a logical match.
  

• We will match you either with an early career scholar who wishes to have a mentor or with an experienced ELATE faculty member who wishes to have a mentee during the 2021–22 academic year. We will also send both of you some suggestions about how to build a productive online mentoring relationship. Plus, we’ll have two optional virtual meetings, one in December and one in April, where we’ll generally check in with folks and provide a space and structure for additional conversations across mentors and mentees.
• At the end of the year, we’ll ask for some brief feedback about your experience in the program so we can enhance it.  

That’s all there is to it. As with face-to-face mentoring programs, we expect that these more distant mentoring relationships will take unique forms depending upon the needs of the participants.