mrschippy Janet Hayes's List: Mentoring

Volume 26, Number 1
January/February 2010

Principles of High-Quality Mentoring
An instructionally intensive approach to supporting new teacher development
By ELLEN MOIR, DARA BARLIN, JANET GLESS, and JAN MILES

National Mentoring Center


The National Mentoring Center at Education Northwest is one of the nation's premier training and technical assistance providers for youth mentoring programs and initiatives. Education Northwest has over 20 years experience providing training, resources, and other services to local mentoring programs and federal, state, and regional agencies.

School-based mentoring is one of the fastest growing forms of mentoring in the US today; yet, few studies have rigorously examined its impacts. This landmark random assignment impact study of Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring is the first national study of this program model. It involves 10 agencies, 71 schools and 1,139 9- to 16-year-old youth randomly assigned to either a treatment group of program participants or a control group of their non-mentored peers. Surveys were administered to all participating youth, their teachers and mentors in the fall of 2004, spring of 2005 and late fall of 2005.

This is a reissue of P/PV's 1995 impact study of Big Brothers Big Sisters, Making a Difference, which proved that BBBS' high-quality mentoring has tangible and significant effects on the lives of youth. Researchers examined the lives of 1,000 10- to 16-year-olds who applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters for mentors. More than 60 percent of them were boys; more than half were members of minority groups, mostly African American. Over 80 percent came from impoverished families, approximately 40 percent were from homes with a history of drug or alcohol abuse, and almost all were being raised by a single parent. Half of these young people were matched with a mentor, while the rest stayed on the waiting list. Eighteen months later, the differences between the two groups were surprising: weekly meetings with a mentor for (on average) a year had reduced first-time drug use by almost half and first-time alcohol use by a third, had cut school absenteeism by half, improved parental and peer relationships, and gave the youth confidence in doing their school work.

Mentoring is now commonly accepted as a valuable activity for youth; but good press, good intentions and earnest desire alone will not enable mentoring to reach its full potential. There are still operational questions to answer and real-life barriers to overcome:

What are the essential elements of an effective mentoring program?

How do you measure and document the quality of a mentoring program?

With traditional mentoring programs working hard to attract new kinds of volunteers and schools facing increased pressure to help students succeed, school-based mentoring is a promising and increasingly popular approach. According to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), the number of school-based matches grew from 27,000 in 1999 to 90,000 in 2002, an increase of 233 percent. P/PV has published two previous reports on the school-based mentoring model. School-Based Mentoring follows up on those earlier studies by analyzing the results of surveys we conducted with youth, mentors, teachers and case managers involved in three BBBS school-based mentoring programs. The report addresses the following questions: What are the characteristics of mentor-youth matches in school-based programs? What is the quality of the relationships? And what kinds of benefits may youth be gaining from involvement? For more information about this report and the new impact study that P/PV has undertaken in cooperation with BBBSA, please click here.

Does my program work? This evaluation guide helps program coordinators answer that question by gauging the effectiveness of both individual relationships and the program as a whole through a simple 20-question survey given to youth. The data can be used to make a specific match stronger, as well as to determine future training needs, implement new policies and measure program progress. The packet comes with reproducible surveys and scoring sheets.

Elements of Effective Practice, 3rd Edition
MENTOR’s keystone publication on mentoring standards has been updated and released to include the latest research and practice wisdom available to help mentoring relationships thrive and endure.

The Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, Third Edition, was sponsored through a generous grant from The MetLife Foundation and, as in past editions, brought together the nation’s foremost authorities on mentoring under the leadership of Dr. Jean Rhodes of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Dr. Janis Kupersmidt of innovation Research & Training.

This report, the second in a series on Mentoring School-Age Children, is based on interviews with over 600 volunteer mentors. The report compares their experiences and the development of their relationships with youth in community- and school-based settings. The authors conclude that both types of programs have the potential to create positive mentoring relationships, and highlight the factors associated with the closest, most supportive relationships.

The evolving vision and role of the coach
Posted by Verity Gough in Coaching on Mon, 08/02/2010 - 12:12
This article explores how your vision change when you coach
The author asks whether the role of the coach is fixed or does it evolve in practice?
Coaching hard to define

Critical Friends

Reviewed: January 2008

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Critical Friends and Critical Friend Groups are peers or colleagues who ask probing questions and offer helpful critiques. While they may be independent of the project/task/issue, their role is to ask probing questions to enable those involved to gain fresh insights into their work. The strategy may be used in individual or group settings. The main benefits of using critical friends are that they provide

This well-respected, quarterly journal addresses timely issues such as professional learning communities, the role of principals, finding time for professional learning, and teacher quality.

The Mentoring Information Kit includes resources on mentoring programs, as well as finding a mentor or becoming one. Learn all about effective mentoring and the ways it can boost your career, whether you are a mentor or a mentee.

Keith Nelson, course director of the Certificate of Higher Education in Coaching at the University of Cambridge explores key qualities required by the developing coach – and how these can be acquired.