Thus wrote a student participating in the GR8 MATES program when the first surveys of our second and third programs were carried out earlier this week. How positive is that!
While there have been a few wobbles as a result of transient students, the programs are settling down and becoming very positive in all respects. Last week the mentors from one of the programs accompanied their mentees to a local Nepean Careers Market where they had the opportunity to visit a variety of stalls covering many possible careers, places of further study, Apprenticeship opportunities and so on. Approximately 6,600 students pass through this event over two days and it is easy for students to waste the time or to feel overwhelmed. Another mentor has assisted a student with the development of a career plan, offering extra time to take the student to a friend of hers who works in this field. On Wednesday night another mentor accompanied her mentee to the student's 2009 subject selection evening at the school and, judging from the emails that have been exchanged since then, this has further cemented the mentoring relationship. Another mentor is planning to introduce her menteee to a high profile sporting organisation towards the end of August if the mentee meets all his school commitments and so I could go on.
12 mentors are preparing for a matching session with students at the local High School where we concluded our first mentoring program recently. This promises to be an interesting occasion.
I shared some points with our mentors earlier today:
· Get out and about. Go for a walk and talk, rather than just settle in a chair and don’t move ie. bring variation into the mentoring meetings. If you move around a bit, this gets the oxygen flowing to the brain and the focus of the student will be consistently good!
· Use the computers for researching, checking emails etc.
· If you are sitting at a table, sit next to one another rather than across from one another. This leads to better communication, you can observe body language etc.
· Preferably sit some way apart from another mentoring pair so you can chat without being overheard.
Small things are being achieved as the program gets under way in these schools. The program only has another 10 weeks to run and it will be interesting to compare the evaluations at the end of the two current programs with those of the first program that took place over 10 months.
While there have been a few wobbles as a result of transient students, the programs are settling down and becoming very positive in all respects. Last week the mentors from one of the programs accompanied their mentees to a local Nepean Careers Market where they had the opportunity to visit a variety of stalls covering many possible careers, places of further study, Apprenticeship opportunities and so on. Approximately 6,600 students pass through this event over two days and it is easy for students to waste the time or to feel overwhelmed. Another mentor has assisted a student with the development of a career plan, offering extra time to take the student to a friend of hers who works in this field. On Wednesday night another mentor accompanied her mentee to the student's 2009 subject selection evening at the school and, judging from the emails that have been exchanged since then, this has further cemented the mentoring relationship. Another mentor is planning to introduce her menteee to a high profile sporting organisation towards the end of August if the mentee meets all his school commitments and so I could go on.
12 mentors are preparing for a matching session with students at the local High School where we concluded our first mentoring program recently. This promises to be an interesting occasion.
I shared some points with our mentors earlier today:
· Get out and about. Go for a walk and talk, rather than just settle in a chair and don’t move ie. bring variation into the mentoring meetings. If you move around a bit, this gets the oxygen flowing to the brain and the focus of the student will be consistently good!
· Use the computers for researching, checking emails etc.
· If you are sitting at a table, sit next to one another rather than across from one another. This leads to better communication, you can observe body language etc.
· Preferably sit some way apart from another mentoring pair so you can chat without being overheard.
Small things are being achieved as the program gets under way in these schools. The program only has another 10 weeks to run and it will be interesting to compare the evaluations at the end of the two current programs with those of the first program that took place over 10 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment