10. Student Profiler/Performer, E-mentoring and future plans

This week the mentors and their mentees had an opportunity to catch up with one another briefly. However, the major focus was on the students completing the Student Profiler, actually called the Student Performer. This the majority of students managed to do in the allotted time. It is going to be a fantastic tool for future mentoring relationships from what I have seen thus far. The Performe affirms the students in some key areas of their personal development, though it also clearly shows areas in which the mentors can work with their mentees during the months ahead, which is fantastic.

The key areas the Performer covers are:

Indeed, the Performer exceeds my expectations 🙂 and I think it was a very useful exercise for the mentors to be alongside their mentees as the latter completed it – there was certainly some healthy discussion going on.

I have undertaken to provide each mentor with an analysis of their mentee’s Performer before they next meet in mid- November -(two week break for exams 🙁

One of our mentees, who had been sick for quite some time, was present this time around and met for the first time. Both were so keen to get started, which is great. The mentor will try and link up for another meeting while the school exams are on. The School Coordinator will arrange this.

After our mentoring session debrief I met with the school’s IT coordinator to go through the plans to set up the ementoring component of the program. The school has done a fantastic job in this area, linking the ementoring component to the school website. Students and mentors will be given Usernames and Passwords to log in and communicate with each other. The Principal, School Coordinator and Program Coordinator (that’s me 🙂 ) will be able to monitor the communication. There is also a special feature which allows students to send a ‘panic’ message if they ever feel uncomfortable with the content of an email. At our next session I have asked for the IT Coordinator to share how the ementoring component will work – we are making positive progress!!

The early successes of this program have led our organisation to make the decision to extend the pilot to two more schools in the regions we serve in 2008. This means we will trial the program in each of the three regions we serve. I am meeting with the potential two schools during the next week or so. The overall idea is to have the pilot programs wrapped up by the end of 2008, so, if we are unable to secure further funding, we will at least have created a replicable program which can be used by others.

Not short of work at the moment!!