Start
On the 23th of Nov we had our first contact to our mentees, Marta, Salvador, Antonella and Lyana. We, the mentors, had planned the program for the day earlier as well as the main outlines for the rest of our mentoring task. It was quite exciting to see what was happening in our eight members team. Our main purpose was to get to know each other a bit by introducing our selves and tell what we’ll do during the meetings to come. We started by an introduction play, called Self Market. It is a simple game, where each player picks up four cards separated on the table. There were 100 cards on the table, so the selection was at least reasonable. In every card there was written a word that characterizes traits of human nature, like intelligent, absentminded, lazy etc. After reading the cards the players try to exchange more suitable cards for him/her and try to get rid of the cards which don’t fit to his/her character. This is the trading part of the game. When every one is happy with his/her cards (or isn’t), the players tell on his turn what these cards he/she got and kept tell about him/her as a person. The main aim after getting known each other, is to warm up the atmosphere and make every one feel more confident, which is the most important feeling to enhance social interactions. At the same time, social interactions enhance metacognition. Through discussions with others, we improve our ability to give a more accurate report on the reasons for our actions and experiences (Frith, 2012). I think that within the day the interaction between us was easy and free. This kind of start was successful and will take us to a good co-operation. I hope that our mentoring would reach the target, so we could be useful to our mentees, those wonderful and fully motivated young people.
My role as a mentor
The name of our team is ILMALÄMPÖPUMPPU. It’s a very tricky word, even to us, native Finns. I don’t know how and why some of our mentees got to the point, that this nomination would be suitable to our group. Maybe it just is a funny word. Anyway, I can sketch my role in proportion to that equipment. Like an ILMALÄMPÖPUMPU my job is to take cool or cold air in(e.g. information), process it and finally output warm air (e.g. understanding). This sounds a bit technical and mechanical, and even selfish, but somehow this is, what mentoring is question about. Of course the main thing is processing, how a mentor is dealing information with his mentee via dialogs. A good mentor is a good listener, who can hear more than just the words in the sentences. He should be experienced in several ways by his job, life and his discipline. He also must be respectable and responsible. And he must know his limits, because he can only lead as far as he knows the path.
What did I learn on the 1st meeting?
My answers can be found in the introduction section of this writing.
What do I want to learn during this mentoring process?
We have decided to joint the two groups as one. Thus it will be interesting to see how we manage to work as quite a big group, where there are four mentees and four mentors. We must plan the mentoring processes carefully, the ways to be active and take into consideration our different backgrounds and cultural effects. In a word, this means knowing our mentees’ student profiles pretty well, which are highly in connection to some parts of their personalities in an academic way. Here we meet the idea of metacognition; how can I learn to see something essential of my mentees metacognitional processes to guide them forward in their thinking and am I aware of my own metacognitive processes? A big question is also English. Can we express ourselves clearly and exactly, that we can understand each other? And finally there is a question of discussions between the mentors. Are we able to share our perceptions and experiments to build a better scaffolding for greater understanding. I want to learn more of scripting, metacognitional skills, dialog, collaboration, scaffolding and English.
How do I understand the concept of scaffolding in this process?
Scaffolding is a very descriptive metaphor to me. It shows clearly its importance and temporary in learning. In this process scaffolding is one possible tool to use. Perhaps one can’t avoid using it. In mentoring processes scaffolding means most of all dialogue and discussion means thinking which means building and rebuilding knowledge, strategies, planning and monitoring. So here we are, in the middle of SR-learning. Is it possible to see scaffolding through SRL? When a learner is advancing in SRL, does it mean, that he himself is scaffolding his learning process more than for example a tutor, a teacher, peers or a mentor? In other words he is using his ”inner scaffolds”. I’m willing to think in this way, because all I learn is individual and private and happens in my brain only. This, however, doesn’t mean, that we weren’t able to learn together, collaboratively.
References:
Firth, C.D. (2012). The role of metacognition in human social interactions. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B, 367, 2213 – 2223.
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