Induction/Training Day
Potential idea to get struggling courses involved: Financial Incentive to attend workshop where students and staff from courses identified as being weak by associate deans will come and develop mentoring proposal whilst in attendance under the guidance of AMP officials. Similar to the RoLEX incentive.
Either that of the training day is for successful applications as a day of inductions and refinement of proposals.
Training Day Schedule
Arrival:
Name Tag
Information Pack which can be used for future reference (see Jamie’s find of the week)
Schedule(?)
Introduction: 20min
Introduction (chair person, Luke M, Paul C, Stuart B?) Why are you here and congratulations for being accepted.
Breakdown schedule for the day
Why AMP is being set up – What it hopes to do (Luke M, Stuart B)
Icebreaking Activities: 30min (Group split the group into small more intimate groups to discuss their projects…based on where sitting?)
Each person to introduce who they are: 10min
1. My name is
2. I’m studying…because I…
3. My mentoring project is…
4. I want to become a mentor because…
5. One of my worries about being a mentor is
6. One thing I hope to gain from being a mentor is
Group Brainstorming: 15min (interactive brainstorming session with result written/drawn on a flipchart, one group to take each project)
Discussion of what the benefits are for participants in the AMP scheme
Discussion of what the roles and responsibilities are ie. what is expected etc.
Discussion of what makes a good mentor
Whole Group Reflection: 15min (each group shares with the others they discussed, training event leader makes sure nothing has been missed and goes over any official guidelines that are to be set by CELT and will be included in the information pack or Mentor Handbook.)
BENEFITS OF BEING A MENTOR
Mentoring gives to an extraordinary opportunity to facilitate a mentee's personal professional growth by sharing knowledge you have learnt throughout the years of experience. The primary intent of your mentoring role is to challenge your mentee to thinking new in different ways, the mentee is not the only one who gains from the arrangement. As mentor, there are certainly various way in which you can benefit as well.
Personal Satisfaction – 'Giving something back': Mentors generally gain a sense of personal reward and pride from being able to assist and contribute to the mentee’s development. Feedback from existing mentors often reflects the fact that mentors feel that, having achieved success in their own careers, they are pleased to be able to 'give something back'. Mentoring gives an extraordinary opportunity to facilitate a mentee's personal professional growth by sharing the knowledge you have learnt throughout the years of experience.
Awareness: As they interact with their mentee, and explore their problems and areas of concern, it will prompt answers, views and perspectives that they may not have been aware of themselves. It can also keep them abreast of other ways of thinking and keeping up to date.
Enhanced Leadership and Interpersonal Skills: Mentors gain the opportunity to practice and develop skills that are beneficial in their own professional development and will inevitably increase and sharpen their own skills and abilities as they challenge and assist the mentees they mentor. By working with individuals from different backgrounds and with a different personality type to your own as a mentor this can push you to improve your interpersonal skills. As a mentor, you can help bridge the gap between generations but have varied work place values and styles. Your ability to manage people different from you is obviously a valuable skill, especially as the workplace continues to become more diverse in every way.
Recognition: Good mentors are well respected. Becoming known as someone who can develop others, can enhance the reputation and facilitate the mentor’s own career progression.
Expand Network of Contacts: Mentors develop many rewarding professional contacts made through and for the mentees they mentor, as well as the opportunity to interact with other mentors.
Broadening the mind: As they interact with their mentee, and explore their problems and areas of concern, it will prompt answers, views and perspectives that mentors may not have been aware of themselves. It can also keep them abreast of other ways of thinking and keeping up to date.
Improving Performance: Alongside enhancing your skills, mentoring can improve your performance. One of your key roles as a mentor is to set a good example for your mentee. Knowing that you are responsible for providing appropriate and accurate guidance to your mentee should motivate you to work harder. Mentoring can also give you a fresh perspective on your performance. Mentees can often ask questions why something is done in a certain way, why do you as the mentor think and act in the way that you do? This could help the mentor take a critical look at their approach generally.
Create a legacy: by becoming a mentor you create a legacy that has a lasting impact on your mentee. Not only do you gain the satisfaction of helping develop future talent, you can pass on your values and know-how to your mentee.
Conclusion:
Mentoring can be a truly rewarding experience. That said, becoming a mentor is a key decision and one which should not be taken lightly. The benefits to the mentor and their mentee are however well worth the effort.
Benefits for Staff
Decreased Workload
Better relationship and communications with student body their needs
Sharing and reflection on ideas and practices
Increased student engagement and success
Benefits for Mentees
Academic Assistance to develop core skills
Student Ownership
Draw from the experience of the mentor
Gain confidence and communication skills
Provides a safety net
Develops employability and life skills
Smoother transition to Higher Education assessment methods and insight to further years
Networking with people in other years
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF BEING A MENTOR
· Maintain a professional attitude on issues such as opinions, marks and complaints
· Offer regular sessions to mentees
· Maintain contact with AMP staff and academic staff
· Complete attendance sheets, self-reflection forms and gather student evaluation information on a weekly basis to upload to the blog
· Demonstrate good learning strategies, facilitate discussion rather than re-teach material
· How to handle sensitive subjects and where to direct students for personal issues or alternative help
BREAK: 15min
Training: 30min
How to lead group session: 10min (Identify a member of staff to lead this – someone to do with teaching)
How to behave as a mentor: 10min
· Maintain a professional attitude on issues such as opinions, marks and complaints
· Offer regular sessions to mentees
· Maintain contact with AMP staff and academic staff
· Complete attendance sheets, self-reflection forms and gather student evaluation information on a weekly basis to upload to the blog
· Demonstrate good learning strategies, facilitate discussion rather than re-teach material
· How to handle sensitive subjects and where to direct students for personal issues or alternative help
List of Contacts (see blog before, to be included in mentor handbook)
What makes a good mentor: mentoring tips, techniques, skills etc.
(the list below is taken from direct quotes found in book and on training pdfs. as well as discussion group suggestions.)
Know your limitations—if you don’t know the answer to a question, that’s okay. You don’t need to know all the answers. Just say you will try to find the information they requested and get back to them. And then do it.
Have a sense of humour.
Treat it as a way of learning yourself, you can gain as much from mentoring as you can give.
Create an atmosphere where participants are taken seriously and where they also can laugh. Think about ways to inject humour into the training sessions—for example, using relevant cartoons as overheads, or telling funny anecdotes about experiences of mentors. People are usually most open to new ideas when they are enjoying themselves and feel comfortable enough to risk making mistakes.
Academic Mentoring involves entering a dialogue.
Pg 80. “Genuine dialogue means a surrender of authority to uncertainty. That is, the participants, including the teacher [mentor], collaborate with the acknowledgment that because there are no stupid questions or final answers all topics and questions become valuable. Therefore, the first principle of mentoring is that you act so that what you believe you know is only provisionally true. Education becomes an experiment.”
Pg 80. “Genuine dialogue means a surrender of authority to uncertainty. That is, the participants, including the teacher [mentor], collaborate with the acknowledgment that because there are no stupid questions or final answers all topics and questions become valuable. Therefore, the first principle of mentoring is that you act so that what you believe you know is only provisionally true. Education becomes an experiment.”
Pg 79. “…The student taking on this responsibility necessarily is acting more autonomously than someone who is, for the most part, dutifully working to assimilated the learning prescribed in the syllabus. The mentor encourages the student by being a facilitator and provocateur…this kind of independent, collaborative learning transforms the way institutions operate and the ways in which students and professors think about their roles. When everyone becomes a learner, the institution becomes more democratic or “participatory”, study is not divorced from real life, and curricula are no longer fixed. When learners make the learning, learning becomes surprising, inventive, and free.”
You are not a teacher.
Assessment: 5min – Introduction into how we will assess, blog etc.
Say that we will expect projects to record progress throughout their project and upload videos/blogs etc.
Say that this is to
· Encourage communication between projects
· Share ideas, tips, difficulties, ask queries etc.
· Take pride in their projects
· Create a portfolio of work to show employers
· Evaluate the ongoing success of their projects
Introduce the idea that without this involvement they won’t be able to access the next stage of their funding(?)
Introduce Mentor of the Week idea
We will be coming round to a random one of you each week to make a little video diary of how you are getting on, any difficulties you are having or any tips for the other mentors. We want you to showcase your projects, be proud of them and share any of your discoveries to help the other mentoring projects.
Link into
Reflection: 20min
Remembering what you said earlier about why you wanted to get involved and what you wanted to achieve with your project and bearing in mind what we have been discussing today we want you to prepare a 30 second elevator pitch, a mission statement for you to refer back to and to form your first blog entry.
· Anyone with similar projects encouraged to get together and start talking about each others projects informally, how they can work with the mentees and deliver the help etc.
· In the groups help each other develop an elevator pitch for their projects
· We can be roaming round with Flip Cameras to record elevator pitch for every project. This confirms what they plan to do and can be put on the blog to refer back to.
Conclusions: 5min
What have we learnt, thanks for coming, don’t hesitate to contact us should you need any assistance etc.
Certificate?
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