College Principal Rev Alan Gregory talks about exchanging new ideas, insights and formational learning through the upcoming Mentor Project.
This year, the full-time teaching staff are making some interesting new friends.
Each of us are teaming up with a Black or Asian scholar in order to explore formation and teaching from a perspective, and against a background of experience, different from our own.
This has the potential for the kind of learning that opens the imagination to new ways of envisioning our work, as we enrich our teaching practices with insights gleaned from conversation across differences of approach and experience.”
Introducing the Mentor Project
The Mentor Project, as we’re calling it, involves us in conversations held twice a term with our assigned mentor, plus a plenary day for all involved at the end of the year.
I am very grateful to the scholars who have given their time to us. Their willingness to participate is generous and, in its way, risky; since none of us know in what directions these conversations will take us.
Also, on our side, we’ve committed to refrain from ‘playing it safe’ but will try and go to places of learning that will stretch us and expose our teaching under new light.
Our mentors are:
- Rev. Dr Caleb Nyanni (Birmingham Christian College)
- Rev. Canon Narinder Tegally (Head Chaplain, Bath and Wells Hospital Trust)
- Rev. Dr Dotha Blackwood (Spurgeon’s College)
- and Dr Carlton Turner (Queen’s Birmingham).
This project has also received strong support from Rosemarie Davidson-Gotobed, the national officer for minority vocations. Durham University gave us one of their ‘seed corn’ grants to help pay for the project.
We hope the venture will bring good things to our teaching and to our own continuing formation. Please keep us in your prayers.
