Teaching Tough Kids
Chapter 8

Overview; mentorship
Does mentoring work in schools

• Where do the benefits lie?
• Student feedback
• Parent feedback
• Staff feedback

• Who is it for?
  • Case study, "Mentoring wasn't as easy as I'd anticipated."
• What is the role of a mentor?
• What is the goal of the program?
  • Case study, "I have learned much from you."
• Which mentoring approach is best?
  • Informal
  • Planned
  • Goal oriented
    • Case study, "You must be the only person who thought I was worth anything."
  • Who volunteers?
    • Case study, "a rejuvenated boy"
  • What about training and support?
    • The workshop
    • Cluster meetings
    • Further avenues of support
  • What should I do if I hear worrying information from my mentee?
  • How is a match between a mentor and a mentee made?
  • Is this another program asking more of school staff?
  • What if the relationship is not working out?
  • Sample, Mentoring Agreement
    • Case study, "Thank you for helping the other girls to like me."
  • Parent consent
  • Sample, Mentoring Consent

• Case study, "Don't kiss Courtney, or you'll get girl germs."

This chapter describes a unique school based mentoring program adopted by a number of South Australian Catholic primary and secondary schools over the last four years. While the program is not a panacea to the complex mix of problems students and staff in schools face, it certainly adds value to the positive influences we have on kids. It has earned a reputation as a means to build staff capacity, better staff and student connections, and improve the well being of kids who need a higher level personal of care. It invites staff to take a close and personal journey with a young person. Those who accept the invitation learn something often missed in the hustle and bustle of the classroom. They learn how kids really think, and how the clumsiness of their emotion and behaviour has less to do with innate badness, and much more to do with inexperience, exploration and discovery.

Just as we are learning to value and conserve the air we breathe, the water we drink, the energy we use, we must learn to value and conserve our capacity for nurture. Otherwise, in the name of human potential, we will slowly but surely erode the source of our humanity

Four years ago the Behaviour Education Team asked if I would design and present workshops to train staff in schools to become mentors to students in need of a little extra care and encouragement.

I agreed in a heartbeat!

Being part of a transforming process for kids where the value of relationship is placed first was enticement enough. To me, few things are as compelling as the opportunity to be an agent of change in the lives of young developing human beings. Too often in schools the focus is on the action; busy classrooms, packed curriculum, rapid exchanges between teachers and students, back to back learning tasks and the quest for immediate and measurable learning outcomes. Schools by their very nature are hectic places and because of this quality personal interactions with students can easily slip by. The subtle beauty of relationship encompassing personal connections, a sharing of ideas and new futures can easily become overshadowed by the system's drive for the 'quantifiable data'. As adults, most of us can recall a person who had a big impact on the way we saw ourselves and viewed the world. Most of us can remember that someone who did a little more than just teach us as part of a group. A significant person who delved a little deeper into what our world was like and shared some insights from their world with us. Someone who took the time to follow up, to see how we were incorporating new information, how we were interacting and we were progressing.

Since the inception of the program, an array of staff; teachers, educational support officers, school counsellors, principals, assistant principals, office staff, librarians and grounds personnel - have been trained in the art of mentoring students. They are quietly taking special care of the most vulnerable students in South Australian Catholic schools. This program has become the quiet achiever building capacity in schools to companion students needing that extra care...