Your First Meeting with Your Mentee

Here are some suggestions:

1. You should receive an email from your mentee(s) requesting an initial meeting during Personalized Learning Time (PLT) [MWF from 11:45-12:15 PM]. Please reply and schedule a mutually convenient initial meeting.

2. At your initial meeting, get to know your mentee a bit. Ask them some questions about what they like to do. Easy peasy.

3. Ask your mentee about their plans for secondary school. Please keep in mind that some 8th graders are not applying to independent high schools. Then explain that the purpose of the Mentor Program is to help all 8th graders acquire skills that will help them present their best selves in high school and beyond.

4. Schedule a follow-up meeting with your mentee. Send them a Google Cal invite so they don't forget. Please consider including Dr. Silverstein on the invite too so I can help hold them accountable. 

Subsequent Meetings with Your Mentee

Here are some suggestions: 

1. Peruse the Secondary School Placement website to ensure that you and your mentee understand the process and how the Mentor Program supports the next stage of their educational development.

2. If your mentee is planning to apply to an independent high school, then consider watching this VIDEO together.  It lays out the important things to consider when preparing for a campus interview.

3. Talk about the importance of making a good first impression. What sorts of things should we be mindful about? Consider watching this VIDEO to kick things off. Come up with a scenario in which making a good first impression would be important: A campus interview, job interview or networking conversation. Then practice the skills required to make a good first impression. Ask the student to step outside and then enter with the intent to greet you for the first time. Do this a few times. Ask the student to reflect on their performance. What do they think they did well? How might they improve? Give them your kind, honest feedback. Then practice it again. Consider starting every mentee meeting with a firm handshake, eye contact, and a warm greeting.

4. Help your mentee reflect on who they are and prepare them to ace school and job interviews. Present your mentee with common interview questions such as:

   • Tell me about yourself. 

   • What is your favorite academic subject or intellectual pursuit? Why?

   • What is your least favorite class and why? What would your teacher say about you in that class?

   • What do you when you're having a hard time in class?

   • What extracurricular activities interest you?

   • What do you see as your greatest personal strengths? Your greatest areas of growth or improvement? Consider registering and taking the Via StrengthsFinder survey yourself and sharing some of the categories (or findings, if you're brave!)  with your mentee to model self-reflection. Students may also take the Via StrengthFinder survey, but please get written permission from the family before they register.

   • What is something you're passionate about?

   • What do you like to do for fun or in your free time?

   • Tell me a bit about your family.

   • Tell me about your "home community." Who in your family or community has influenced you? How? How have you given back?

   • How do you deal with conflict?

   • If there were one thing you could change about your current school, what would it be?

   • Why do you want to go to school here?

   • What do you like to read? What is your favorite book?

   • What did you do last summer?

   • Which of your friends do you admire the most and why?

   • What accomplishment are you proudest of?

   • What leadership roles or opportunities have you experienced?

   • How will you contribute to our school?

   • How will you benefit from attending our school?

   • Do you have any questions for me about our school?

   • Throw them a Joker's Wild question to help them think on their feet: If you could be any historical figure, who would you be and why?

Give them feedback on their answers and ask them to try again.

3. An important part of presenting your best self is to demonstrate curiosity and respect for your interlocutor. Ask your mentee to develop and ask some appropriate questions about your own intellectual, professional and personal interests, strengths and areas of growth. Provide them with practice in how to engage and sustain conversations with an adult. Ask them to self-evaluate their performance on the basis of the Mentor Program Rubric. Then provide constructive feedback on their self-evaluation. Identify an area of growth and try again.

4. Put it all together. Do a full mock interview with your mentee from making a good first impression to a battery of interview questions. Ask them to reflect on their performance on the basis of the Mentor Program Rubric. Then provide your constructive feedback on their self-evaluation. Identify an area of improvement and conduct the interview or a portion of it again. Fill out the Mentor Program Feedback Form and/or contact Jed with what you think the student needs to do their best.

5. Consider raising the stakes. Take a video of a full mock interview with your mentee and then watch it back with them so they can self-evaluate on the basis of the Mentor Program rubric. Engaging in video critique can be personally challenging but has been shown to greatly increase self-awareness. You can use a phone, iPad or laptop. Dr. Silverstein has a video camera on a tripod that mentors can borrow and he'll assist in whatever way is helpful.