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National Mentoring Month, which concluded last week, is always a great opportunity for educators to consider how to tap into the power of mentorship, and in particular interest-based mentoring, which I’ve seen transform the lives of so many young people. 

In my last post, I described the ideological shift that educators must make to successfully launch a mentorship program that is truly based on students’ interests and motivations. Such a shift requires letting go of some of our most closely held beliefs about school, including where it should be, who should be involved, and how it should happen.

But once that shift is made, I’ve found that the details of launching an interest-based mentorship program fall into place quite naturally. Based on my experiences founding and running four such programs in New Mexico and Washington, DC, there are a few things that I’d recommend keeping in mind as you launch interest-based mentorships for your school community.

1. Find adult allies.

True interest-based mentoring is, in most cases, a venture into a new pedagogical territory. Though you’ll have no problem getting children on board, you’ll also want to have some like-minded adult explorers at your side. When I began planning to pilot an interest-based mentorship program at a charter school in Washington, DC, where I was principal, I found important allies in the head of school and a few enthusiastic families. They were helpful in figuring out logistics, but their real value was more about momentum. Schools are busy places, and too often, the great ideas of a lone educator don’t gather momentum simply because they didn’t take the time to assemble a team of supporters who become invested in the program. In a sense, your adult allies become like a board–you keep them posted with updates, invite them to events and showcases, and use them to hold yourself accountable for making the program happen. 

2. Slow it down.

Mentorships happen at a different pace than the rest of school. They begin with adolescents slowly getting to know themselves again, not adults rushing to cover pre-determined curricula, and things have to slow way down. My recent experience supporting an 8th grader named Bereket into mentorship was fairly typical: He signed up for the program enthusiastically, but then days and weeks passed, and he still hadn’t taken the first step of identifying a field he wanted to pursue. But I knew he wasn’t procrastinating or being lazy. Like many young people, it had been some time since he’d had the opportunity to choose his own learning adventure, and he was actually remembering how to access his own curiosity–like flexing a muscle he hadn’t used in years. Finally, he came to me one day and said he’d like to study astronomy. When I probed, he described looking up at the stars as he walked outside a few nights earlier and suddenly remembering how as a child he used to always wonder where the universe ended and began, how it all worked. He realized those childhood questions were still with him, buried deep within, but as alive as ever, waiting to be explored.

3. Build a sandbox.

I’ve found the sandbox metaphor a perfect way to think about interest-based mentorship programs–it’s not our job to figure out what happens in the sandbox, but we do have to build the little retaining walls to contain it. Leaving aside legal and safety concerns (see below), the four “walls” of an interest-based mentoring program are these:

a. Length: Every program I’ve worked with has facilitated mentorships that are between 6 and 9 months long–any shorter doesn’t really allow time for the mentor-learner relationship to develop properly. For school-based programs, I find it’s best to start the program in October or so when students are adjusted to school and wrap in mid-April or early May before they barrel into the busy end-of-year wrap-up.

b. Milestones: You’ll need at least three milestone events: an opening orientation meeting, a mid-year check-in, and an end-of-year showcase. It’s also a good idea to check in with each learner and mentor at least once every two months. 

c. Celebration: There’s no need for grades or badges when the learner is intrinsically motivated, but it’s critical to acknowledge and share what has been learned, validate the learner’s experience, show appreciation to the mentor, and generate further interest in the program. But lest you start dreading hours of Google slideshows and posterboard talks, keep in mind that the best interest-based mentorship programs have the learners present as experts in their chosen field. So if the mentorship is in architecture, they should share blueprints and models with a panel of architects and engineers. Performing artists should perform; artists and writers should share their work at an opening or reading; chefs should cook, and so on. Two years ago, I facilitated a mentorship in removing non-native invasive plant species from Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. For her end-of-year demonstration, the learner had her audience (which included the other mentors, the other learners and their families, and a park ranger) meet in the park, and she hiked us into the woods. She even had us pull some English ivy along the way! 

d. Termination: What happens when a mentorship doesn’t work? When the learner realizes he really has no interest in auto mechanics, a mentor moves, or a student’s family life has a drastic change? Good interest-based mentorship programs have clear procedures and policies for helping learners and mentors leave their mentorships with dignity and reflection – when absolutely necessary. 

4. Build in safety measures from the start.

Tap into your school or district’s pre-existing guidelines on volunteers, and meet with human resource staff to make sure you get your safety measures right. Mentoring.org has some great guidelines on how to make sure mentors are screened and can also point you to some common sense safety policies, like making sure mentors and learners are never in a closed space one-on-one. 

If you’d like to learn more about my experiences setting up interest-based mentorships, feel free to reach out at sethbiderman@gmail.com. I’d love to share experiences and point you toward the valuable resources I’ve used over the years. 

Few endeavors are more rewarding or important than helping a young person connect to their own curiosity, identify something they’d love to learn, and then go out into the community to explore the field with a caring adult. It can be a powerful rite of passage, helping them develop the clarity, purpose, and real-world skills they’ll need when they leave our classrooms and take those first tentative steps into their adult lives.

Interest-based mentorship programs offer a tried-and-true pedagogical approach for making this happen. As educators, we should not be asking ourselves whether we should work with our school communities to launch such programs. The main question, really, is when.

A graduate of Brown University (BA) and the University of New Mexico (MA and Ed.S), Seth Biderman is an experienced educator and school administrator. He has worked in public and independent schools in New York City; Cali, Colombia; Washington, DC; and Santa Fe, NM. He has also founded and directed out-of-school mentorship programs to connect young people with areas of personal passion. Most recently he was principal of the 7th and 8th grades and Arts, Languages and Movement program at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School in DC. 

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