How to Build a Community Compact

Mentor/Volunteer Program

What Is a Community Compact Mentor/Volunteer Program?

• • • A plan to increase partnership and resources for providing mentors, tutors and volunteers to students attending the lowest achieving high schools and associated feeder school within a community.

A strategy to help students succeed in school, work, and life Builds confidence, resources, and support to achieve potential

What Does It Take To Start a Community Compact Mentor/Volunteer Program?

• • • • • • Collaboration is the key to providing this continuum of services Marketing efforts to recruit Mentors/Volunteers is paramount Training for potential mentors/volunteers Matching of mentors and mentees Ongoing support to maintain, sustain, and improve mentor relationship Resources

Community Collaboration

• • • • • Mentors are to be from within the community Volunteers are to be from within the community Engage parents consequently increasing the level of encouragement and guidance students receive at home to improve the motivation to attend school regularly Job shadowing opportunities Internships

Marketing Efforts

• Develop a clear objective -Gain support for mentoring concept -Recruit mentors and volunteers • Plan an effective communication strategy -Establish the need for mentoring to enhance student support services -Describe the program components and activities -List benefits and impact of mentor/volunteer program for the

Community Compact Communication Strategy

• Audience #1- Business Community - To generate mentors/volunteers, internships, job shadowing, and funding • Audience #2- Community and Faith-Based Organizations - To recruit mentors/volunteers and generate in-kind support • Audience #3- Schools and Local Education Agencies - To recruit mentors and program

Sample of Marketing Tools

Recruitment

• • • • Partners should be chosen because they can increase and enhance the delivery of student support services Can share in the care available to each student and family in service Interact with students and families on a regular basis Hold and provide opportunities that can better serve the students participating in the community compact

Mentor Agreement Template

Training

• • • • • • The Community Compact should provide substantial training to mentors and volunteers providing services to students through the community compact Training should align directly to the mentoring, tutoring, and volunteering activities provided through the community compact workshops, job training, character education) The training should include the program rules Mentor goals and expectations Mentor obligation Ethical issues

Training Tools

• • • • • • Training agenda Sign-in sheets Mentor/volunteer training evaluation surveys Mentor training content (PowerPoint, handouts) Alignment to mentor/tutor/volunteering activities Essential Forms

A Sample of the Community Compact Mentor/Volunteer Training Tools

Attendance Sheet Template

Evaluation Form Template

Mentoring Program Training

Sample PowerPoint Presentation

Why Should You Be a Mentor?

• Provides a student with a personal connection and buy-in • Helps student to feel like someone “has their back” • Increases student morale • Improves student motivation • Source of accountability, encouragement, support, and advocacy • Helps student to perceive school, teachers, work in a more positive light

When Should You Be a Mentor?

• • • • • • • When students are unsuccessful academically or behaviorally When other interventions seem to fail When a student is having significant issues getting along with others When students exhibit very little motivation and effort or just do not seem to care about work and/or behavior When students seem to have little guidance and/or support in the home When a student seems suspicious of the school and staff For those kids that always seem to get a bad break

How Do I Mentor?

Make a list

• Preparing for your first meeting • Make a list of things that you want to know about the student • Make a list of the things that you think that they want to know about you as a Mentor • Write down as much as you can and begin a communication process through email if possible .

How Do I Mentor?

Take the initiative

• Make the first call or email for the meeting • Meeting time is

Essential

, don' t shift meeting time around to accommodate my busy schedule • Only an emergency should alter your date • Have a back up person that has already met the Mentee (This should not happen more than once.)

Be clear about purpose and boundaries

• Gift-giving, other than educational, acting as an advocate for career advancement, making empty promises, or loaning money, out-of-bounds in mentoring relationships • Set Ground Rules for how you will communicate (tone) with each other • Discuss whether ethical or moral issues are allowed or to what extent during conversations

Create an agenda

• Prepare an Agenda and ask Mentee if they would like to add anything • Some of typical items are (1) getting to know each other, (2) goals and expectations, (3) concerns that might interfere with our meeting together, (4) initial impressions, (5) questions you have about Mentee, and (6) why you think you can be a worthy mentor.

How Do I Mentor?

Listen deeply and ask powerful questions

• Two essential skills for successful mentoring are • (1) in-depth listening, that is, suspending judgment, listening for understanding and providing and accepting a supportive atmosphere; and • (2) asking powerful questions, that is, questions that are challenging in a friendly way and questions that help the other person talk about what is important to that person.

Ask only "open-ended" that usually start with "how" or "what." Plan for the next meeting

• Review your mutually developed agenda to determine our progress.

• Solicit any ideas about what you both might want to discuss at your next meeting • Ask for an impression of how this meeting went and what might you both be able to do (or stop doing) next time to make the next meeting as good or better.

Experiment with process

• Use coaching, role plays, simulations, role rehearsals, experiential learning activities, brainstorming, mind-mapping and other techniques that may assist the Mentee • Just be transparent • Go for a walk together, sharing lunch or a snack • Attending a special event

How Do I Mentor?

Focus on wisdom

• You are a resource, catalyst, facilitator, idea generator, networker, and problem-solver, but you are not a person with all of the answers. • You have experiences and you have learned from those experiences • Your Mentor Role is not one in which you "tell" another person what to do or how to do it • Freely share what you have done (or have learned), not as a prescription, but more as an example of something from which you gained some wisdom • Contribute ideas or suggestions, be a collaborator, “Don’t let knowing get in the way of being."

Maintain and respect privacy, honesty, and integrity

• Offer confidentiality in the legal sense only, but do the best you can to ensure that "what is said in this room stays in this room."

Talk to Parents Often

• Establishes and builds trust and rapport with parents at home • Increases parent and home cooperation • Provides increased support for students at home • Helps dispel misinformation and mistruth students may give to parents • Avoids students positioning parents against teachers • Helps to get everyone on the same page • Helps to get parents involved and increases buy-in • Helps provide parents with accountability • Can diffuse angry parents’ concerns

Matching

• • • The Community Compact should consider the goals and outcomes as well as characteristics of the mentor and mentee Compact should arrange initial meeting between mentor and mentee Mentor interpersonal skills should always be considered

Ongoing Support

• Training opportunities and enhancements • Problem-solving support • Access to resources, staff and community members • Supervision • Recognition

Thank you for participating.

If you have questions about this presentation, contact: Janna M. Willett POPS PLUS Community Compact [email protected]

(407) 843-1202