Master Mentor Curriculum

Course Module II

Section I: Course Outlines

Course: Mentoring II
Time required: 140-180 hours
Instructor hours: 3 teaching hours per week, 3-6 office hours per week
Credits: 3 credits

Course Introduction
Mentoring II is a primarily a skill development course for mentors. During the course students focus on professional skills specific to mentoring sign language interpreters. These include assessment of first and second language skills and the interpreting skills they support, along with techniques for providing effective feedback through learning-focused interactions. They are encouraged to bring all their insights into student-centered learning and cultural competence from Mentorship I to these topics. To that foundation, they add exploration of cognitive models of the interpreting process and extended discussion of mentor/mentee interactions. They also look into how professional mentoring activities are implemented in the community and how they will implement their own mentoring services. The goal is lead students to an understanding of the science, and the art and the business of mentoring.

Course Description

Students work with the key theoretical models of interpreting and mentoring processes in order to identify when, how and why mentors can facilitate skill progression in mentees. They then apply these ideas in extensive assessment and mentoring practice activities.

The course begins with an exploration of current research into language reception, processing and production and the part played by language skills in the complex task of interpretation. Students focus on locating error patterns that novice interpreters display and then learn how to feed this perspective into assessment and skill development activities.

During the course, students alternate in the roles of mentor and mentee as they practice assessment and interactive mentoring feedback skills with their peers in the on-line course environment. As they do so, they are asked to pay particular attention to the processes and possibilities of distance mentoring using chat rooms and on-line group discussion capabilities.

Course Design Strategies

The course presents a multi-tasking learning environment in which students assimilate theory from several different guest presentations, develop their assessment and self assessment skills, take on practical assessment and mentoring activities with others, participate in cooperative discussions to develop their own understanding of mentoring processes and develop their business acumen as they prepare for their final internship project.

To support students in this complex learning environment:

new topics are approached in an ordered progression. For instance, issues in language assessment and mentoring are tackled first, before issues in interpretation assessment. Interpretation assessment and mentoring in turn come before explorations in portfolio assessment. In a sense this separation of assessment and feedback activities into discrete areas of practice is artificial. However students get a chance to establish foundational skills before exploring higher order mentoring tasks, scaffolding their new learning on pre-existing knowledge and experience.
the focus of activities and of grading is always on applying theory to mentoring practice. Students are not expected to “quote verse and chapter,” but to make pragmatic selection of ideas they can use and to provide documented justifications to support their choices and ideas. To support this practical approach to the course contents, students are provided with a range of materials designed to help them move quickly into practical application of theory. These include presentation handouts, case studies, checklists, graphics, templates and peer postings.
The distinct skill set related to business practice is bracketed out from mentoring skill development. For the most part students explore these skills in a parallel forum that is open throughout the course, except for a one-to-two week segment at the beginning and end of the semester. In the first week students explore the kinds of information they will need to gather to define their fieldwork project. However, that work then goes on almost as a sidebar while the course turns back to its main focus on the development of mentoring skills. This timetable is designed to give participants as many weeks as possible to develop their project ideas. Students can work through the business materials at their own pace although they continue to provide feedback to each other through required business postings. Group focus is then directed back to business planning in the final two weeks.
students get an opportunity to see researchers explain their work and also have access to the ideas of leading interpreter educators who are experienced in incorporating theoretical models into their work.
The lead instructor and facilitators are available to guide students in the logistics of participation, and oversee the practice components of the course. The lead instructor also suggests connecting threads between technical material and application issues approached in this courses and philosophical explorations of mentoring practice from the previous course.
Students participate in cooperative learning experiences in pairs and small groups and this work is guided by teaching assistants and the lead instructor.

Assignments and Grading

Assignments reflect the strong accent on application of theoretical and research insights directly to the assessment and mentoring situation. Students have the opportunity to apply their learning in several different applications and formats.

Participation in class discussion postings: 30%

Thirty percent of the grade is achieved by contributing to group learning. Students start by posting descriptions of their fieldwork project to the group accompanied by questions to the group about their work. In turn they are required to read and respond to questions about the fieldwork projects posted by two other students. Throughout the semester each student is required to make regular discussion postings on assigned readings and discussion topics at a rate of about three per week. In addition, they are required to post responses to the work of other students on all main assignments. Participation in these peer discussion activities has a number of purposes. Students have the opportunity to learn from the learning experiences of others, they are able to share their own insights, practice mentoring their peers in the content and application of mentoring, and practice articulating questions and insights of their own.
Students make journal entries about their experiences in the mentoring practice components of the course, and submit their insights privately to their group TA.

Language assessment activities: 10%

Students prepare a written self-assessment of a sample from their own language portfolio, integrating theoretical insights from assigned readings. They pick out areas of strength in their work and areas requiring improvement for each of the language skill features they choose to discuss. The objective of the assignment is to make students familiar with current research approaches to assessing skills and weaknesses in the language elements of interpretation. By applying the theory to their own work samples they gain insight into how closely an analysis schema fits an interpreting sample -- what kinds of information it captures and what it leaves out. They get a sense of additional information they may need to get a better understanding of patterns they identify in a mentee’s work. Central to all peer work is the expectation that they practice interactive, Vygotskian mentoring approaches.
In the second language assessment assignment, students assess someone else’s work using the language portfolio of a peer, together with that peer’s own assessment of the work under discussion. The goal here is to learn the importance of information that only a person producing the language can provide about their mental processes, habits, distractions, and feelings of competence.

Portfolio assessment activities: 10%

In this assignment students are required to work separately and with others in their assigned discussion group on articulating criteria by which they would use to assess an interpreting portfolio objectively.
In a second assignment students are paired into mentor/mentee pairs and schedule mentoring meetings to discuss work from their language portfolios. Each student works with two students as a mentor and with two students as mentee, for a total of four mentoring interactions. Each student prepares and posts journal entries for each of the mentoring interviews discussing not only questions raised and solutions suggested in the mentoring process, but also the issues raised in distance mentoring with their peers.

Interpreting assessment reports: 30%

Students work with three different samples of interpreting work, both sign-to-voice and voice-to-sign. They prepare individual mentoring assessments of the work samples provided and participate in group discussion and assessment of samples.

Final synthesis paper and fieldwork plan: 20%

Students present the final form of their fieldwork project, including the philosophy and objectives behind their proposed work and the financial, business and logistical elements it includes. Students also read and post substantive comments on the synthesis papers posted by other students.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successfully completing the course students will be equipped to:

distinguish between interpreting errors stemming from language skills and those stemming from the interpretation process
provide assessments based on observed patterns, including both strengths and errors
gauge the severity of particular errors in terms of meaning outcomes
understand the need for and use of specific examples to support all feedback in mentoring
understand the uses of theoretical models in mentoring practices
know the assessment tools available
understand the principles of student-centered learning from the Vygotsky model
be aware of the effects of mentor world views on mentoring interactions
elicit information from mentees concerning reasons for error patterns and meaning production
support self-assessment skills and self-directed learning in mentees
develop criteria for assessing portfolios as part of mentoring practice
collaborate with others on assessment tasks
incorporate multicultural considerations in mentoring work
know the key considerations in establishing mentoring programs
maintain good record keeping with regard to all mentoring interactions
understand business aspects of providing mentoring services
design a mentorship project: concept, logistics, evaluation
employ good business practices

Materials Used

No central text is used in this course although students work with publications of researchers in the fields of interpretation and interpreter education.

In the assessment area these include texts by by Dr. Marty Taylor, Dr. Dennis Cokely, publications by Sandra Gish, by Dr. E. Winston and Dr. C Monikowski and Dr. Brenda Schick.
Students are made aware of various assessment tools, including EIPA testing materials and elements of the Region IX Mentoring Program, Student Competencies: Defining, Teaching & Evaluating Proceedings of the Ninth National Convention Conference of Interpreter Trainers.
They use mentoring tools described in Classroom-Based Evaluation in Second Language Education, Fred Genesee and John A. Upshur.
Students also use templates of mentor/mentee dialogue structure, interpreting samples provided specifically for them to focus on identifying interpreting skill patterns and processes, templates for journal entries, and for business and profession record-keeping activities.
Other key instructional materials used in the course include commentary on various research approaches offered by guest lecturers.
Finally, they work intensively with peer produced work and with their own work in self-assessment activities.

Course Structure

The course is divided into seven sections, but progress through the material is not strictly linear. In many cases material is worked with in one way and then students return to it again to approach it from another perspective. For instance, students work with the language skills portfolio material that they developed in Mentorship I first to do a self –assessment using new theoretical insights. They will work with it again as mentees when others provide language assessments of their work. Then, later in the course, they will revisit the material yet again using it in portfolio assessment explorations. In part this element of circularity in the use of resources reflects the many layered levels of skill that are involved in mentoring interpreters.

Section I: Introduction: Students spend their first week familiarizing themselves with the course structure, assignment expectations and timelines in order to plan their own effective participation.

Section II: Business (part one): Students look at case studies of specific mentoring programs in order to understand the criteria for successful implementation. They are encouraged to apply information in the presentation and readings to the Mentorship Fieldwork Projects they have under development. They also focus on learning how to assess mentoring businesses initiatives, so that they will be able to mentor others in these areas in the future.

Section III: Assessing Language: Students work with the concepts presented in the books by Dr. Marty Taylor and apply them specifically to the assessment of language skills in interpretation work. They explore knowledge-lean and knowledge-rich features of interpretation work, and patterns of strengths and errors connected with various features.

Section IV: Mentoring Language: Students are introduced to the work of Vygotsky and begin to explore concepts and effective practice for generating learning-based interactions with mentees.

Section V: Mentoring Interpreting: Students spend four weeks on this subject covering three sub-topics: interpreting models, interpreting features and mentoring interpreting. They learn about the various models that have been constructed to understand the complex mental tasks performed by interpreters, and discuss in depth the Cokely and Colonomos models. Students consider the value of using models, review various assessment tools and focus on incorporating theoretical insights in theory and practice presented to date into their own work.

Section VI Portfolio Assessment: In this section students begin to articulate what can be learned from analyzing a mentee’s portfolio. They draw on their experience in assembling portfolios and integrate the ideas of their peers in order to understand how inclusion decisions are made and what they may tell about the skills and interests of the portfolio presenter.

Section VII Business (part 2): In this section students return to the topic of business skills. They work with templates for business planning and address some key issues fro independent contractors, concerning tax and employment status.

In the pilot running of the course, students got the chance to learn from guest instructors with recognized experience in the particular section topic. These instructors provided materials, exercises and assignments to encourage exploration in their particular subject matter. One benefit of this structure is that students are exposed to different teaching styles and offered different kinds of assignments. The lead instructor provides links between the contributions of the guest instructors and offers the class a number of questions to guide their progress. (See Section II of this module, “What We Did”)

Section II: What We Did

In this section of the course module we lay out details of how Mentorship II was run in the pilot program. We detail the contributions of the particular group of instructors who were involved. Our objective is to spark reflection on ways to meet the course objectives when new faculty and new materials are involved.

Syllabus of the Course

I: Course Introduction

Students spend their first week familiarizing themselves with the course structure, assignment expectations and timelines in order to plan their own effective participation. The focus of activity is to set up the infrastructure for collaborative and cooperative work. Students continue to explore implications of the idea that each participant is also in some respects a mentor and teacher for others in the course because each has his or her own experiences to contribute to the group task of understanding mentorship.

II: Business (part I)

In this section students approached mentoring as a service activity carried out in a community, and understood that service providers must be able to evaluate, articulate, and market their credentials in order to succeed. Gary Sanderson, of California State University at Northridge’s National Center on Deafness, started discussion off with an account of the establishment of a mentorship program in his region. He pointed to key aspects of the initiative including defining who is responsible for the program and who will take responsibility for policy setting, paperwork, budgeting and assessment of mentee skills. Another important consideration on the service delivery side of mentoring is making sure that mentorship interactions are structured around identifying a manageable number of areas for improvement. Sanderson also noted the importance of keeping the deaf community and individual consumers aware of the purposes and plans for mentored practicum placements of mentees. He emphasized that consumers must retain the choice to request more seasoned interpreters if they feel they need to. He finished off with a comment about the value for mentors in keeping a mentoring notebook to guide their interaction with mentees.

Students were encouraged to apply information in the presentation and readings to the Mentorship Fieldwork Projects they had under development. They also focused on learning how to assess mentoring businesses initiatives, so that they will be able to mentor others in these areas in the future.

Assigned readings:

From Region IX mentoring materials: A Sign of the Times Chapter 2, Laying the Foundations and Chapter 6, One Mentorship Program up Close

III: Assessing Language

This section began with a presentation by interpreter educator and researcher, Dr. Marty Taylor. Taylor noted that her research was driven by the realization that many working interpreters have weak ASL skills and possibly weak English skills as well. Assessment of their work has to take these factors into consideration. She therefore chose to ask about the performance differences between novice and expert interpreters in order to try to assess the major features of a strong interpreting performance on both lexical and discourse levels. Her next step was to develop an instrument for gauging whether these features were present or absent in the work of less experienced interpreters. For each of the features she identifies, she has located particular skills that characterize that feature and particular errors that show up when that feature is missing in a performance. The objective is to identify patterns of error, rather than particular errors in work that may simply result from a momentary distraction. Taylor classifies some features of interpreting work as “knowledge-rich” and others as “knowledge-lean” She goes on to distinguish between patterns of errors that severely compromise meaning equivalence and those that are less severe so that deaf clients get the gist of the message. This distinction is important to mentors guiding mentees in prioritizing areas for skill development.

Assigned readings

Interpretation Skills: English to ASL Interpreting Skills, Marty Taylor, Interpreting Consolidated, 1993
Interpretation Skills: ASL to English (2002), by Marty Taylor. Interpreting Consolidated, 2002

Language Assessment Assignment:

Students were asked to prepare a written assessment of their own language portfolios, using on their own work some of the evaluation features described in assigned reading for this section. They were required to pick out two areas of strength in their work and two areas requiring improvement for each of the language skill features outlined in Taylor’s work that they choose to discuss.

IV: Mentoring Language

Students began to encounter directly the sources of some of the ideas about Vygotskian - learning and mentoring philosophy that they began to explore in Mentorship I. The section began with a presentation by Sandra Gish, Program Coordinator of the BS Degree Program in American Sign Language/English Interpretation at Western Oregon University. Gish discussed the evolution of her own philosophy of mentoring and the strategies she has developed over thirty years to include mentees as collaborators in the learning process. A central theme of her work is the need to identify and start from skills, worldviews and interests the mentee brings to the situation.

Gish pointed to the impact of Vygotsky’s work in psychology on the evolution of her own ideas bout mentoring and introduced students to several Vygotskian concepts that she uses in her own work. Examples include the “zone of proximal development,” which identifies a region for mentoring work between a student’s independent abilities and the skill levels they can achieve with help. The formula “x+1” denotes the starting and end goals in this process when “x” identifies what a mentee knows to begin with and the “+1” indicates what he or she can add through the process of working with a mentor on guided self-development. What the student knows, and what the mentor knows, are thus combined in the plan the mentor develops for working with a mentee. The overall objective of the mentoring relationship, in Vygotskian terminology, is to move the mentee from an “other directed” learning situation where he or she looks for external validation of work to a “self-directed” situation where he or she depends on self-assessment to plan future skill development. Gish suggested that most interpreter training programs re-enforce other-directed learning while mentoring has the possibility of fostering self-directed learning.

Gish went on to discuss techniques for eliciting information from mentees that provide the foundation for building skill enhancement activities around the mentee’s, not the mentor’s goals. She introduced the concept of “scaffolding,” a process that allows mentees to climb up from the foundations of their knowledge using a support system put in place by the mentor. As the student progress and solidifies his or her foundations, the scaffolding gradually falls away. Gish also provided students with some interaction guidelines, including sample mentoring conversations. Using these guidelines, students practiced identifying patterns in a mentee’s work by asking questions about internal factors triggering particular interpreting outcomes. She concluded with some practical and ethical advice to mentors, suggesting that mentoring must involve success for the mentee. Mentors must avoid setting up students to fail at teacher-defined problems and solutions, One way to do that, she suggested, is for mentors not to ask questions to which they already know the answers.

Sanderson offered a second presentation on the usefulness of models for mentors. He suggested that models provide a framework for objective discussion with peers about interpreting problems and also help mentors to pinpoint the source of repetitive errors. He then touched on mentoring procedure and the importance of establishing a limited number of priority areas for a mentee to work on. He underlined the importance of scheduling regular sessions with defined topics so that mentees know what to expect. Finally, he suggested that mentors make a conscious effort to produce positive feelings in each session.

The third presenter in this section, interpreter educator and consultant Sharon Neumann Solow, focused on factors that affect the interpersonal aspects of mentorship situations. She highlighted the importance of not using personal language in mentoring interactions in order to keep focus on the work under consideration without endangering the self-esteem of the mentee. She went on to discuss how to use descriptive detailed comments based on solutions rather than listing problems. Neumann Solow provided students with a checklist that she uses in her mentoring record keeping. It includes columns for what the message was, what was signed and the feedback given. She also noted that mentors sometimes do not feel their work approach is understood or appreciated by mentees and suggested that mentors become their own “positive interpreters” of mentee comments in these situations.

Assigned readings

Gish handouts and guidelines
A Vygotskian Perspective on Interpreter Assessment (Gish)
Chapter 7: Journals, Questionnaires & Interviews in Classroom-Based Evaluation in Second Language Education, Fred Genesee and John A. Upshur
Each student’s language portfolio
Student postings

Assignment:

Students assessed someone else’s work using the language portfolio of a peer, together with that peer’s own assessment of the work under discussion. The goal was to learn the importance of information that only a person producing the language can provide about their mental processes, habits, distractions, and feelings of competence.

V: Mentoring Interpreting

Students started with a review of Robert Lee’s article (read last term) about interaction models that have been used to describe interpreters: helpers, machines or conduits, bilingual, bicultural mediators, or allies. Lee cautioned that the rigid use of such models to describe interpreting takes no account of what deaf consumers understand about the work of interpreters as they observe it from their perspective as consumers.

Sharon Neumann-Solow then offered a second presentation, this time focusing on the usefulness of the Dennis Cokely model of interpreting process. She explained how elements of this model correspond to her own practices of identifying and sourcing patterns of error in interpreting work and noted the advantages of using a model as a framework for assessment, feedback and guidance. She finds models useful in dividing problematic elements of a mentee’s performance into definable and manageable chunks. Neumann-Solow offered a brief summary of Cokely’s work touching on his concepts of semantic intent, encoding, noise, decoding, syntactic and semantic processing and finally the realization of semantic intent in the work produced.

Students learned about the Colonomos model from graphic representations of the model and commentary offered by the lead instructor, Dr. Elizabeth Winston. Key elements noted include: analyzing the source language for the speaker’s goals, language variables, cultural variables, ideas and feelings, along with his or her personal style and context. Colonomos details three aspects of teaching interpreters: concentrating on the source, representing meaning and planning target text. She also suggests a way to visualize where an interpreter “stands” in doing interpreting work. During message reception that imaginary position is within the conceptual frame of the speaker, but then the interpreter “relocates” into the context of the target language.

Students shifted to the next topic, assessing interpreting features. They returned to the work of Dr. Taylor, focusing this time on the features of interpreting she has identified, and applying these as part of their assessment of interpreting samples. Students were also made aware of one standardized interpreting tool, the EIPA. This tool was presented as one example that is well defined and has discrete features that may help mentors identify interpreting patterns. Dr. Brenda Schick described her work with Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment instrument (EIPA) She discussed the context in which it was developed and the uses it now plays as a diagnostic feedback tool.

Assigned readings

Roles, Models, and WorldViews : A View from the States, Robert G. Lee, Deaf Worlds, Issue 3, Volume 13, 1997

Optional readings

Interpreters and Interpreter Education, by Christine Monikowski and Elizabeth A. Winston
Interpretation : a Sociolinguistic Model, Dr. Dennis Cokley, 1992
The process of lecture comprehension, Ronnie S. Labauer

Assignment:

Students participated in small group discussions of one assigned interpreting sample and prepared an assessment based on your group’s discussion. In two additional interpreting assessment activities, students assessed interpreting samples on their own and discussed their assessments with others in mentoring meetings.

VI: Portfolio Assessment

In this section students began to articulate what can be learned from analyzing a mentee’s portfolio. They drew on their experience in assembling portfolios and integrated the ideas of their peers in order to understand how inclusion decisions are made and what they may tell about the skills and interests of the portfolio presenter. They were asked to work independently and in their discussion group in determining what criteria could be used in assessing a portfolio. Each student suggested rating points for portfolio assessment and participants pooled these ideas to produce a list of criteria. As part of this exploration students were required to consider some suggested readings for the section and to find additional writing on the portfolio assessment from external sources. They also explored the topic in a practical way by providing portfolio assessment for two colleagues.

Assigned readings

Language portfolios of peers
Portfolios and Conferences chapter in Classroom-Based Evaluation in Second Language Education, Fred Genesee and John A. Upshur
Other information on the use and value of portfolios located by students
Group discussion forum

VII: Business (part II)

In this section students returned to the topic of business skills, while still applying mentoring approaches in their meetings with other students on this topic. Students worked with templates for business planning and addressed some key issues fro independent contractors, concerning tax and employment status.

Lynne Eighinger, owner of a private interpreting business and a student in the Master Mentor Program, covered a number of topics in her presentation, “The Business of Interpreting.” She focused particularly on the differences between being an independent contractor and an employee, on tax considerations and on recording requirements connected with running a mentorship practice. She touched on bookkeeping, rate-setting, marketing, contracts, protecting yourself as a business person, and aspects of Professionalism.

Students used the materials and sample business plans offered by Eighinger in the preparation of their final fieldwork proposal and business plan. Besides posting their own plan for discussion, students were required to analyze and comment on the plans of three peers.

Required readings

Region 1X materials: “One Mentorship Program Up Close”
Handouts on business plans