Post your training questions and resources here!
Hi everyone... Judy Taylor, the Project Director for the Mentoring Resource Center, is going to be the "editor" for this Forum section on training mentors, mentees, parents, and other program stakeholders. Judy is on the road doing some training herself this week, so she asked me to post a welcome message on her behalf.
We hope this section will be a great place to learn about training techniques, training resources, and other information that can help you prepare participants for their mentoring journey.
Obviously, the MRC has put out a number of training resources over the years. But I'm curious to learn more about how your programs are customizing participant training specifically for your program needs. So I'll throw out a couple of starter questions:
1) How do you teach your mentors about the youth you serve? Do you use statistics about the kids you serve? Do you have former mentees come and talk about their experiences in your community or at the school? What information do you provide to give mentors a sense of the types of young people your program serves?
2) Do any of your programs provide a program orientation for teachers, counselors, administrators or other school personnel who might be engaging your program at the school site? If so, what do you cover?
Please feel free to share your thoughts on these topics or any other training-related questions you may have.
Hi Judy,
When we provide training to our mentors, we try to prepare them as much as possible for what the mentoring sessions will be like. We always give statistics about mentees (cultural and economic backgrounds), we invite previous/returning mentors to share some of their challenges from the previous school year and some of their successes, and we also talk with mentors about the various situations that may arise while in the classroom and try to provide solutions or ideas on how to handle those. We try to be careful not to focus on the challenges too much, but to also be real (really try to find that balance) so mentors are not afraid to enter the mentoring classroom for the first time, but are also not shocked by the environment they may be walking into.
One of the most helpful items we have started to put together is a syllabus which prepares mentors for the acivities and topics that will be covered in each mentoring session and also gives them every date that we will be meeting so they can plan ahead. (We provide life skills and job readiness group mentoring in a structured school-based environment). Additionally, at training, all mentors receive a profile sheet about the students they will be matched with (includes information about each student's hobbies, interests, family situation, and other important information that the student has filled out themselves). We have found that mentors then feel even more ready to walk into mentoring for the first time.
If you want to learn a little more about what we do and/or our curriculum, please visit our website at www.winningfutures.org or post a follow-up question.
Melinda Brakenberry
Melinda Brakenberry
Partnership Manager
Winning Futures
-Metro Detroit Mentor Collaboration
-Rare Foundation