Are you looking for a way to develop healthy relationships for your students? Teen mentoring has been shown to increase academic achievement and decrease unhealthy behaviours in both the 'mentor' and 'mentee'.
The objective of the Collaborative Community: Teen Mentoring in Schools project is to create a school-based mentoring collaborative community of educators and mentoring organizations and to provide the framework for a sustainable teen mentoring network. The Alberta Mentoring Partnership (AMP) is offering the following opportunities to develop and strengthen teen mentoring in schools through regional and provincial networks supported by a 3 year grant from the Carthy Foundation in partnership with AMP.
In 2019 (year one) there will be three “sharing meetings” where schools will be invited to share and learn – face to face in early spring 2019, online in May/June 2019, and another face to face in the fall for continuing and new members. The frequency of the face to face networking meetings will decrease in year two and three based on the needs of the group with peer to peer sharing, site visits and sharing effective practice as the focus. Through ongoing engagement in the Collaborative Community, participants will come together to share their experiences, successes, challenges and recommendations in regards to school-based mentoring.
Collaborative Community – Day One:
The first face-to-face gathering of the collaborative community is meant to develop staff and agencies (if available) knowledge and ability to develop and implement mentoring within a school context. This could be with adults from the community, mentoring agencies, or within school/between school partnerships for student-to student mentoring. This learning opportunity is intended for staff at the middle and high school levels, as well as partnering agency staff to share and learn from each other. Surveys will be sent out to participants in advance of the first meeting, as well as following, in order to plan and tailor sessions to suit participants’ needs where possible.
Through this session, participants will:
- Strengthen awareness of mentoring in schools, including clarification of what is mentoring, what is teen mentoring, the many benefits, and how it can look in school settings. This includes both informal and more formal mentoring programs.
- Develop an understanding of the benefits of mentoring, for students, staff, school community, and the greater community itself.
- Bring schools staff and partnering agencies together to create and strengthen networks, giving these participants more connections and opportunities to share evidence-informed practice.
- Provide opportunities to plan, develop, and strengthen mentoring in schools, including sharing resources to support this in multiple ways.