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On-going work
Alison Soutter
NSW Department of Education and Training
Mentoring programs which focus on students with or at risk of developing behaviour difficulties are proving to be an effective intervention to increase emotional literacy in schools. Mentors provide students with effective role models, positive relationships and structured teaching.
Children and young people benefit from contact with adults but teachers cannot provide all the contact children need. Parents are very busy these days with the increased demands of work and there are fewer adults in the community for children and young people to relate to. Once children routinely met adults in the corner shop, at church, and throughout the neighbourhood, nowadays children stay inside the house and may not even know the neighbours. In the community there are many retired people who are at a loose end. With appropriate training and Working with Children checks they can make excellent mentors.
To bring children into contact with adults to guide them, a number of mentoring programs have been developed based on research showing that transition points are the best time to intervene to provide students with the skills to make a new beginning. There are mentoring programs for every transition point.
The Beginning Well Program uses mentors to assist vulnerable children and their parents in the transition to Kindergarten. About half way through the year experienced parents are paired with the parents of four year old children with the early signs of behaviour disorders. They meet every week in a structured playgroup at the school. The playgroup is set up to explicitly teach the skills of learning in the classroom. Gradually the children learn about school while their parents feel supported and become comfortable in the school environment.
When the children are ready they all go to the canteen with the mentors to learn how to order lunch. Another day they may go to the library and borrow a book. While they are away the parents attend workshops on topics they have chosen from a menu of topics. Beginning Well is helping vulnerable children feel confident when they begin school and their parents to feel much less anxious about the transition. Many parents still carry hurts and fears from their own schooldays which have to be put to rest to enable them to support their children’s progress.
The Learning Assistance Mentoring Program (LAMP) pairs mentors with students in Year 2 to prepare them for the transition from infants to primary school. Community members are trained as mentors. Always more mentors are trained than needed because some get jobs or undertake further training once they realise the possibilities. Mentors all come to the school at the same time and see their children one to one in a large space like the school library. The session is just 30 minutes once a week because longer programs have been found to provide no extra benefit and make it more likely that mentors will miss sessions.
Each child and mentor pair in the LAMP program have a soft toy and a home for it. The home is a clear plastic box with a lid. In the home are the toy, the lesson materials for the week and some games, a library book and coloured pencils and paper. There is plenty for the child and mentor to do together if they finish the lesson quickly. Sometimes the pair will have a project which they are engaged in throughout the year.
Mentors in both LAMP and Beginning Well programs are supported with feedback time over coffee after every mentoring session. This provides an opportunity to deal with any relationship difficulties as they arise. It also welds the group of mentors together so that they have an identity and feel justifiable pride in what they are doing. At the feedback sessions mentors find out about their student’s achievements. An unanticipated benefit of these sessions has been that the teacher who runs the program is infected by the mentor’s enthusiasm for the children. They become less stressed and more creative.
The LAP mentoring program lasts a year and finishes with a celebration and ‘graduation’. The parents come to the graduation as well. They are able to tell the mentors about changes in the children’s’ attitude to schooling. Usually the children or grandchildren of the mentors gain as much as the children who are mentored. Giving makes everyone happier.
Some high schools run very successful mentoring programs to ease the transition from primary to high school for all students. The programs use Year 9 and 10 students, including those at risk of dropping out of school, as mentors. Being a mentor can be a huge boost to a young person who feels that there is no purpose in coming to school. The opportunity to contribute makes a student feel that they can do more than they thought.
The lessons which the students teach Year 6 children are on topics such as making friends, study skills, reading a timetable, high school subjects, homework, diaries and finding your way around. They go to the primary school once a week to teach these lessons. When the students reach Year 7 their mentors meet them weekly during roll call to talk about their progress.
Mentoring is proving to be an excellent strategy for supporting children and young people because everyone feels worthwhile when someone older and wiser pays attention to them. When mentoring programs are well structured and when they are run in a safe environment such as a school matching is not a particular issue. Children do not seem to mind which adult helps them so long as an adult does and well trained mentors can relate to most children.
Children are apprentice adults and every apprentice needs a master.
Alison Soutter
Alison is a senior education officer with the NSW Department of Education and Training
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