Mentoring Handbook

• Manual of Style

[edit] Introduction

[edit] Why mentoring can be fun

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Mentoring can be fun because you take a responsible position that can command respect of younger pupils, peers and adults. Working in a responsible position in a team is also often associated with job satisfaction in working life.

Enjoyment can also come from creating enjoyable entertainment or education for others and from participating in the resulting experience.

[edit] For the skeptic

[edit] Why mentoring? What's in it for me?

It is difficult to aim to instill learning motivation and self motivation in others without reflecting on your own learning motivation and self motivation. A pupil in the role of a pedagogically trained mentor should consequently experience an increase in his or her own learning motivation and self motivation as a direct result.

Likewise it is difficult to help others to act according to higher-order volitions without reflecting on your own higher-order volitions.

Whatever a mentor does for his or her protégés is likely to increase the understanding and the horizon of the mentor in return, especially when the mentor is still a teenager himself - or herself.

A mentor finds him - or herself in a responsible position (with potential consequences for his or her own school career) and in an area of conflicting interests between protégés, parents, teachers and tutors. This situation could be seen as valuable training for social skills and especially for diplomatic skills. The role of a pedagogue should also be beneficial for a mentor to develop an extensive active mental vocabulary for metacognition and adequate social goals towards his or her protégés.

Last but not least it is difficult to help others to find and to organize sensible leisure time activities without expanding your own horizon in this area, which can also be fun.

[edit] Why do I need higher-order volitions and metacognition?

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The human brain is quite good at repeating previous behaviors that have proven to be successful and it is capable to create (random) stimuli that surface as the desire to do something, usually to repeat an action that has previously proven to be successful. The higher brain functions are not necessarily involved or are not involved to a degree that creates an intellectual challenge. Consciousness and emotions occur primarily when the telencephalon is presented with problems it has not yet an established solution for. In that case the cerebral cortex builds new neuronal networks under the guidance of the limbic system and on the basis of past experiences. Consequently what you might want to sustain and to expand your intellect is intellectual stimulus and training for introspection.

Higher-order volitions allow you to follow goals that are not primarily influenced by external stimuli or lower-order volitions with a strong tendency towards repetitive actions. Metacognition allows you to analyze your own (or somebody else's) thinking and to make informed choices about the factors that influence it. One could argue that both are necessary to give the human brain a degree of self-control it does not otherwise possess but which it is commonly assumed to possess. One could also see both as necessary to establish free will. ^{[Higher-order volition]}

Following the categorical imperative it seems only reasonable that you might want to provide what you would like to receive. Following the categorical imperative you would probably also not wish for a society in which people had not established their higher-order volitions and learned to apply a sufficient degree of metacognition, consequently mentoring would become a moral obligation and recruiting protégés as future mentors could also be seen as a moral obligation (in the best interest of the protégés).

[edit] What's an active mental vocabulary? You made that term up.

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Many papers and proofs begin with a definition of terms; making a term up does not by itself discredit the term. In this case the meaning is pretty generic. The difference between an active vocabulary and a passive vocabulary is the difference between being able to phrase something and being able to understand the phrase when it is used. Words that do not suggest themselves are not part of your active vocabulary but they do belong to your passive vocabulary when you can deduce the meaning. The brain contains a vast amount of associations that may, appear as the vocabulary in which you can be addressed. Parts of that vocabulary are more active and other parts are less active, meaning they do not suggest themselves as easily. Inert knowledge could also be seen as a less active part of one's mental vocabulary.

To train your active mental vocabulary you could decide on a higher-order volition to prefer certain behaviors over others and to view each successful application of that higher-order volition as a success. Behaviors that train quite desirable aspects of your mental vocabulary are mentoring and teaching.

Computer games and, to a lesser degree, other media can create an overabundance of perceptions of success. Consequently another higher-order volition could be to limit artificially created success situations in order to avoid a slippery slope towards addiction (as a worst case) and to preserve more of a sense of achievement for goals chosen by higher-order volitions.

Of course children should be given the opportunity to experience success in learning situations and to derive motivation from it, but at some age a protégé may need encouragement to occasionally prefer intellectual motivation over pleasure. The emphasis is on occasionally, because an intermediate position may be desirable; to generally prefer intellectual motivation could, for instance, lead to lack of socializing.

[edit] What mental vocabulary do I need when I know my higher-order volitions?

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Where does the idea to consider higher-order volitions originate? You can only follow higher-order volitions when your active mental vocabulary suggests to analyze how a lower-order volition relates to higher-order volitions and to do that you again rely, to a degree, on random associations, not on a strict algorithm.

In more day-to-day words: Reminding yourself to reconsider your higher-order volitions may require training like any other skill. The skill is trained when you help others to reconsider their goals and volitions and to plan how to reach their goals. This could be seen as better training because the task to help somebody else tends to be intellectually more challenging than reflecting on your own goals and volitions. One could also see this as over-training a crucial skill for your own benefit. It also isn't uncommon that the teacher learns something about what he teaches, which is metacognition in this case.

The ability to work with people also requires training and to educate other people is among the best training you can aim for. The ability to work with people is also often circumscribed with soft skills and is, under that heading, also a qualification for working life.

Mentoring and teaching share the qualities of being benevolent by design, of providing and embracing intellectual challenges and are both social by design. In contrast a mental vocabulary can also reject intellectual challenges if it makes little use of analysis, anticipation and imagination, an attitude which passive TV consumption may promote.

[edit] Theory

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[edit] Complexity of thought in teaching

The complexity of thought, notwithstanding subject matter, rises in four steps:

• learn
• teach
• teach to learn
• teach to teach

The last step is more complex because once you have taught to learn you will probably want to teach how to teach somebody to learn (teach to "teach to learn"). This involves at least three persons (senior teacher, student teacher, pupil) and the senior teacher has to form an understanding about the metacognition of the student teacher and bring it into relation to his own view of the understanding of the pupil.

Consequently it may seem desirable to allow as many qualified people as possible to teach to teach. This is the case for a teacher, who has to educate assistant teachers, and for an instructor, who has to educate mentors, in the following concept for a school system ^{[Wikiversity assistant teacher program]}:

[edit] A hypothetical school system

Variable entry phases from grade eight to grade eleven can create a continual challenge for pupils to rise to the next level at their own pace. The pupils can receive additional motivation from wanting to follow the role model of their own assistant teachers, tutors and mentors; they can receive motivation from wanting to follow their own peers, who have already made a step to the next level, and they are motivated to adopt an adult attitude because their own pupils are significantly younger at first and are usually not perceived as adequate peers, which aids in making the class teacher the most relevant role model. The status of a pupil as assistant teacher, tutor or mentor can also determine a social rank among pupils and, to a degree, replace less desirable ranking schemes the pupils may adopt consciously or unconsciously; the perceived social rank can further influence the selection of desirable goals within the school community over goals derived from arbitrary role models.

According to a German study ^[wikinews] pupils' enthusiasm for school may decrease towards the eighth grade. A responsible role can aid to complement enjoyment with a purpose, which is a further argument for motivating pupils to become assistant teachers in the eighth grade.

[edit] Formal and mandatory vs. informal and voluntary mentoring

[edit] Psychology

There is a gap of about ten years between striving for autonomy and fitness for autonomy. Young teenagers are occasionally more convinced of their own skills than would be appropriate and may lack the ability to determine sensible borders for an activity. Parents are by custom the primary and sometimes only noteworthy custodians. At the same time many parents are unavailable for a significant time of the day or are insufficiently qualified to be educators.

For a protégé an assigned mentor can fill a gap, where a natural mentor may be missing. For the protégé the psychological effect of a mentorship can be either an increase in autonomy or a dependence on the mentor, which could repress autonomy (a possible but not a generally advisable outcome). Even in the less beneficial case of increased dependence on another person the mentor should prepare the protégé to become a mentor, which is very likely to counter the effect when the protégé becomes a mentor.

The role of a mentor has the psychological effect of allowing the mentor to assume a more mature role and to receive the respect of others for filling that role at an age when that acceptance may have more than one beneficial effect for the teenager. The more relevant effects can be motivation for self-motivation and self-esteem in a beneficial role.

[edit] Didactics

[edit] Constructivism

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Constructivism is a set of assumptions about the nature of human learning that guide constructivist learning theories and teaching methods of education. Constructivism values developmentally appropriate facilitator-supported learning that is initiated and directed by the learner.

[edit] Becoming a mentor

[edit] Qualification

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You should probably be at least 15 years old and have some prior experience in taking care of younger teenagers or children.

[edit] Training for mentors

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Participating in a parent education program might be a good idea as may be some form of participation in youth work.

[edit] Self-assessment

No matter if your organization has formal requirements for becoming a mentor or not you may be able to deliver a better service if you make a thorough self-assessment. What skills and what knowledge do you have? How much pedagogy do you know? How much psychology do you know? Do you have the necessary soft skills? What would you recommend others to learn and have you learned what you would ask from others yourself?

[edit] Problems, ideas and concepts

[edit] Informal vs. formal mentoring

No matter what degree of planning your organization has and what amount of personal preparation a mentor has achieved, as long as you haven't got any further qualification the best view is probably to see your work as informal mentoring, even if you have some formal elements, as, for example, a questionnaire. To make the step to formal mentoring your organization should be member of a qualified umbrella group that helps to define your standards, your organization should be able to provide access to literature about mentoring and the individual mentors should strive for a formal qualification.

[edit] Protégés' problems

[edit] Family

Sometimes it may be tempting to assign mentors inside a family just out of convenience. Why shouldn't older siblings be mentors? A good reason to avoid this is that relationships inside a family tend to be very informal and may follow acquired social behavior that may not be in line with the goals of a mentoring organization. Another reason is that possible problems may be hidden by implicit expectations about what are internal affairs of the family, which can also diminish the value of a formal mentorship. Under perfect conditions older siblings and parents may act as natural, informal mentors anyway and assigning a formal mentorship to an older sibling would change very little. The point is that in any case a formal mentor assigned by a mentoring organization probably should not be a relative.

[edit] Natural mentors

The Handbook of Youth Mentoring^[1] defines natural mentors as "nonparental adults, such as extended family members, teachers, or neighbors, from whom a young person receives support and guidance as a result of a relationship developed without the help of a program specifically designed to connect youth and adults to form such a relationship (i.e., program mentors)." In the context of this book the term natural mentors will be used to include everybody (including parents and teenagers) who engage in activities that provide long-term support and guidance in a way that respects a teenager's interests (while putting them in relation to the view of an impartial observer) but do so outside a formal mentoring program.

While an assigned mentor should not be a person that may be likely to be a natural mentor an assigned mentor could increase the motivation of natural mentors in the social environment of a protégé. There may be a small risk that natural mentors may become less active in the presence of an assigned mentor but that doesn't appear to be a significant problem, as the assigned mentor has a very limited amount of time and a natural mentor has no real reason to withdraw from the protégé outside the time spent with the assigned mentor. The assigned mentor probably should pay attention not to accidentally undermine the authority of any natural mentors.

An assigned mentor might want to understand what natural mentors or potential natural mentors are available in the social environment of a protégé. (See also: Questionnaire). The mentor could try to cooperate with natural mentors and try to motivate potential natural mentors to take an interest in the education and upbringing of the protégé. Parent education programs and courses or literature on mentoring can help to increase the understanding and motivation of potential natural mentors. A natural mentor willing to cooperate could also be invited to join the mentoring organization as an active mentor or as an associate member and be given access to the organization's library and means of communication.

[edit] Cross-age peer mentoring

The Handbook of Youth Mentoring^[1] provides the following definition of cross-age peer mentoring: "Peer mentoring involves an interpersonal relationship between two youth of different ages that reflects a greater degree of hierarchical power imbalance than is typical of a friendship and in which the goal is for the older youth to promote one or more aspects of the younger youth's development. Peer mentoring refers to a sustained (long-term), usually formalized (i.e. program-based), developmental relationship. The relationship is "developmental" in that the older peer's goal is to help guide the younger mentee's development in domains such as interpersonal skills, self-esteem and conventional connectedness and attitudes (e.g. future motivation, hopefulness)."

[edit] Mentoring organizations

If you want to be a mentor but there isn't a sign of organization around you to be a mentor in you can begin to build that yourself. What probably isn't a good choice is to do without a formal organization. What happens without an organization? You find some younger children and befriend them. If you earn their respect you can be like a mentor to them but there's no particular need to use the formal term. The advantage of an organization is that it may help to organize (hence the name). An organization with formal rules may earn you more respect from adults and it may help to accomplish things that you wouldn't get done alone or which are too easily postponed until forgotten.

Another advantage of an organization is that it may implement something like an inter-generational contract. If you want to be a mentor but you haven't had one yourself that is too late for you anyway? That depends on the organization, it could have interesting roles to offer for you later on ^[advisor] or it may be able to provide you with a mentor later in your education. The experience of having been a mentor is likely to be valuable for you in any case.

[edit] Working groups and human cognition

If you respect how human cognition works you may deduce working in groups as a logical consequence. Single individuals are prone to make mistakes because they failed to take something sufficiently into consideration or because something didn't occur to them at all. While this can apply to adults as well it is even more relevant for teenagers, who may lack the experience to arrive at certain conclusions.

A mentoring organization can both give you a valuable social environment and provide you with like minded individuals who can give you advice and new ideas. In a small organization or in a local section of a larger organization you can also observe what the categorical imperative tries to explain in general: The value of the group depends on each member's respect for the group and input into the group. A mentoring organization should respect this concept and show that the members have understood the concept.

[edit] Making contact with other organizations

[edit] Association

At what age you can form a voluntary association depends on the local jurisdiction in your country. There are alternatives to forming your own voluntary association: You may be allowed and be able to find another organization that acts as your legal representative or you may be allowed to from an unincorporated association.

Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association." ^[2]

Additionally article 15 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that "Children have the right to meet together and to join groups and organisations, as long as this does not stop other people from enjoying their rights." ^[3]

[edit] Schools

When you are an independent organization that offers mentoring to pupils of a school it is only polite to make contact with the school and discuss with a representative of the school if and how you can cooperate with the school and what you could do for them and their pupils.

[edit] Local education authority

You can tell the local education authorities that you exist. They do not have to take notice but if you are sure you exist as an organization (maybe wait until you are sure) and you think you are noteworthy enough then you could let them know you exist and what role you intend to play in education.

[edit] Umbrella groups and other mentoring organizations

To locate umbrella groups you might want to join or other mentoring organizations you can try the Mentoring Portal. You can also leave your own business card there so others can find you. You can, of course, also form your own umbrella groups if you have found other mentoring organizations willing to join the effort.

[edit] Other

Parishes and community centers seem a logical choice to contact. They may be inclined to offer rooms and may be willing to provide some help with organizational issues. Offering courses in kess-erziehen in cooperation with a parish also seems like a straightforward choice.

[edit] Ideas for mentoring organizations

[edit] Parenting driver's license

A parenting driver's license (German: Elternführerschein) is a hypothetical license for parents which would qualify them as parents and educators. In Germany a single school (the Nikolaus-August-Otto-Hauptschule in Berlin-Lichterfelde) has decided to make parent education programs mandatory, which could be seen as a step in that direction.

If it doesn't exist what could a mentoring organization do with it? A mentoring organization could withdraw the parenting driver's license. Parents must assume they have one otherwise they wouldn't be parents. An organization of mentors with a well-founded opinion and the backing of their protégé could tell the parents that they had just lost their parenting driver's license. This could be a friendly and unofficial warning that the mentoring organization had discovered a need for participation in a parent education program or would be willing to offer a course themselves (or both).

The unofficial character and friendly tone would make it clear that mentors were just offering advice but at the same time they could make it clear that they were expecting some sort of reply to the invitation. It may even seem desirable that mentors should be oversensitive here: Being oversensitive could be a good excuse if parents were offended by the "allegations". A good reply would be: "We know we are oversensitive; please see this as a prank on our side and play along." Parents unwilling to respond to that kind of invitation would have disqualified themselves automatically.^{overstatement}

A first invitation could be presented in person by a mentor. A second invitation, after two or three month, could be a document and be brought to the attention of an advisory teacher or a representative of a cooperating organization willing to take notice. This would document the work of the mentoring organization as a serious effort and it would put parents in a situation were they would probably like to respond to the first invitation.

If parents without parenting driver's license were in short supply mentors could just invite some more parents without any problems who were just willing to play along and see what their children or their mentors or protégés came up with.

A good place to hold a course may be a school willing to offer assistance (or a community center / youth center equipped with lecture rooms). To call something a "parent education course" the course should be supported by a person qualified to hold a parent education program. If this would require funding your organization was unable to get you could still make your own course but you better refrain from calling it a "parent education course". An alternative is to invite parents to an official parent education program (and let them pay themselves) and complement that with a course of your own. To be able to coordinate both courses the course instructor has to consult with you, if he or she is not willing to do so that may be a good reason to find somebody else.

Only in really severe problem cases with very uncooperative parents a mentoring organization should consider consulting with the social assistance office as that step could cause allegations being brought forward from an official side and the mentoring organization would have more or less failed to handle the problem, which could be an exaggeration in a vast majority of all cases.

Obviously this idea only works for (mentoring) organizations.

[edit] Parents who allow too much

Pupils usually do not complain when their parents allow too much. Mentors who are just a few years older may also have a blind spot here, because it may seem a desirable situation. In the unlikely event that a mentor should perceive parents as too tolerant the first problem may be to get the protégé to see this as a possible problem. For a mentor it probably should be important not to pass the protégé over easily. One way to involve the protégé could be to get her to agree on exaggerated behaviour parents should stop at some point, like playing a video game all day long, and then to test the parents. Parents who had clearly lost their driver's license according to previously agreed upon criteria could then be invited to parent education courses with the backing of the protégé.

[edit] Awards

If you think withdrawing a parenting driver's license that doesn't exist can't be done or is too impolite you can also give parents awards. The award for unorthodox research in pedagogics or something like that should make clear what you mean. The award (e.g. a 2 meter sculpture made of paper-mâché with an unexplained dedication to Médecins Sans Frontières) could be built and handed over by a committee of mentors and protégés with a promise of listing all winners in the printed magazine "pedagogics" of the mentoring organization and an invitation to attend their course on how to avoid pressure (pressure and print are the same word in German^[4]) in pedagogics. You don't have to have a printed magazine "pedagogics" to make that claim, in fact not having such a magazine rounds off the award rather nicely. It would mean that parents would either have to understand that the magazine did not exist so that could not possibly be the meaning of what you said or they hadn't got sufficient information about the mentoring organization.

The size of the sculpture could vary depending on what you think how unreasonable the parents were. The German word "Riesen" means "giants"; the implication is that anything that is larger than appropriate is unreasonable. Funny sculptures can easily be built from balloons, just glue or tie the balloons together in the shape you want and then cover the balloons with paper-mâché, allow the sculpture to dry for a day, then paint and decorate it. Don't make the sculpture too beautiful or it could be seen as insulting.^[4] Stripes of tin foil (me tall) go well with self-important parents. A visible, translucent balloon half-full of water (what-er?) is good for indecisive parents. Rainbow colors (polarization) go well with moody parents. Deliver by taxicab (taxis, stimulus) if the parents are impulsive. Wings (taking a "flying" position) could be used for parents who tended to exaggerate something, ^[wings] which could be work, a hobby, restrictions, demands or anything else. Parents who failed to cooperate could be awarded two different awards. A moon could orbit the award for parents who were too stern: The moon appears to be much too (large for a) star (in German "Stern"), the larger the more this quality would be emphasized.

The reference to Médecins Sans Frontières would mean "You don't want to be doctors without borders, do you?" (doctors being insensible persons here and borders being self-restrictions or beneficial restrictions for the children in this case). The author has yet to identify what pedagogues or psychologists call this psychology but it is probably something like telling-you-something-in-a-way-so-that-you-have-to-think-and-smile-and-cannot-be-angry.

Parents who failed to educate their children or themselves could receive an award resembling an atom model and titled "the neutral element of education".

An award committee should always be as polite as possible. You can bring a camera to record the ceremony but you should ask before turning on the camera. Please consider that television series like candid camera can also easily overstep some borders themselves; this isn't candid camera but could make a similar impression.

If the mentors deliver the award without any explanation of the language used don't be too surprised if you get an ugly 3 meter sculpture in return. Obviously the artists have to explain their artwork to the audience, otherwise an atom model could easily be mistaken for a planet with a moon.

[edit] Writing a parent education course

For mentors who want to write their own parent education course there is the Parent Education Course Writer's Guide.

[edit] Wiki E-mentoring

Wiki E-mentoring could be an additional service of your mentoring organization. Wiki E-mentoring could match mentors with children and teenagers between age 10 and age 16 and allow the mentors to send between three to seven e-mails per week referring to interesting Wikipedia articles appropriate for the age-group of the audience. The articles could be send with a personalized abstract/introduction in the format of an "Article of the Day" on Wikipedia. This would allow the audience to feel personally addressed and could perpetuate the protégés' interest in Wikipedia and provide an initial motivation for the protégés to form a small community and to communicate with their Internet mentor. The audience could use a wiki, wiki page or web forum to ask questions about the articles or general questions. The rationale is that a young child or teenager cannot be expected to find suitable and interesting articles in Wikipedia him - or herself and to maintain curiosity over a longer time, at least not reliably. The Internet mentor would also be able to explain details of the articles or address any other questions of the protégés. This would be an additional service and would have no relation to the actual mentor - protégé relationship. Within the same organization an Internet mentor could, of course, consult with the assigned mentor of a protégé in his group. An Internet mentor should have a guideline what sources were appropriate (e.g. only Wikipedia or a list of sites).

[edit] Advantages of written communication

Written communication is often more well thought-out while verbal communication runs the risk of insufficient planning, because humans can't think fast enough to consider all aspects of what they say while talking. A logical consequence is also that you should always be prepared to take back what you said because it wasn't well thought-out. Communication in e-mails or a wiki should be used as an opportunity to train more well considered communication.

[edit] Adult members

Adult members are generally a good idea, because adult members can help you to be recognized as a serious effort and they can help you to be allowed to do things that may be difficult otherwise. Getting a room for an event or a mentor conference for instance may be difficult without adults as organizers and supervisors.

[edit] College students

College students as members may add to the reputation and usefulness of a mentoring organization. College students could also create a connection to larger tutoring and mentoring programs where college students teach pupils. If you have no college students in your organization but you have pupils intending to attend a college you can also ask if the future college students are willing to stay with your organization for at least their first year(s) in college.

[edit] Recruiting adults

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You can recruit qualified parents or other people who may be public spirited enough and adjuvant for your organization. A good way to receive positive attention by adults may be to make a public contribution yourself. This can be any kind of contribution to the public good that makes sense to you in the specific community and society you live in. Some senior citizens may, for instance, be glad to receive assistance and some may be able to provide the assistance and advice of somebody who is of full age.

You can, of course, insist that anybody who acts as an adviser to your mentors or represents your organization to the outside in some way should actually have read some literature on mentoring, including people from social professions one might see as already qualified, e.g. teachers or pastors. You could, for example, require that adult members have to donate a book on mentoring or parent education to your library and have to be able to answer questions about that book. Anybody unwilling to do so would probably not be of much value to your organization anyway.

[edit] Parent committee

A mentoring organization can invite parents to advise the organization in the form of a parent committee, which could also accept non-members. A parent committee can help the mentors to find appropriate positions or acceptable positions in matters where the acceptance by parents may be critical. The relationship of the parent committee to the mentoring organization can be similar to that of a parents' society to a school. Mentors may have to remind their parents to take this seriously and to form an appropriate advisory board and to honor the democratic rules of the mentoring organization; parents may otherwise be inclined to fall back into a parent role when dealing with teenagers.

[edit] Mentoring adults

[edit] Community organizer

A mentoring organization can also mentor adults and that may not even require adult members. Adults, however, may not like to be lectured by a teenager so the activity may require some diplomacy. A group of mentors could call themselves "community organizers" and make it their self-imposed task to invite people to participate in societal life. Pensioners may, for instance, benefit from a bit of encouragement to take an interest in different aspects of societal life that may not have received much attention during their working lives. A mentoring organization can help pensioners to search for opportunities to participate by making contact with other organizations and by offering advice (the term mentoring may seem exaggerated here, an exaggerated offer can make people refuse the offer). An obvious opportunity is for a senior to join the mentoring organization but associations in the neighborhood may provide plenty of other opportunities to increase participation in societal life. A mentoring organization that decided to actively address people in larger numbers should have adult advisors, who can help to organize the effort. One could, for example, create a questionnaire that aimed to assess the needs of the interviewees and arrange appointments with people who had been recommended. Every interviewee could be asked to recommend other people who could be visited. The visiting community organizers could bring information material about local associations and organizations and could present their service a bit as advertisement for local associations. The same type of service would be useful for families (who might appreciate the mentoring effort as it is) and new arrivals in the neighborhood.

[edit] Community magazine

A mentoring organization could also decide to print a magazine suitable for an adult audience and not primarily for teenagers and parents. Some adults may prefer a local magazine with the goal to enhance community and local mentoring efforts over a direct offer like a community organizer.

[edit] Entertainment for seniors

A Wii console can also offer good entertainment for seniors and motivate some healthy exercise. At the same time seniors are much less likely to own or merely know this kind of entertainment at all. A mentoring organization could decide to put up a notice in an old people's home and to visit the residents in a lounge with TV for a tournament in Wii Sports or similar entertainment. When you are playing Wii Sports with a different social group you aren't "Bowling Alone" but the game itself should only be the beginning or the catalyzer of social interaction. It is probably okay to sell a few copies of a community magazine on the occasion or just to leave a copy in the lounge.

[edit] Mentor conference

A mentor conference could be an irregular event organized by cooperating mentoring organizations. A mentor conference would allow mentors to meet, to exchange ideas, to present recent projects or to organize future projects. A meeting might not seem necessary if mentors had access to a school wiki or another wiki but meeting in person would allow a different quality of socializing and community, which is something mentors should have learned to appreciate, either for themselves or as a service to others.

A mentor conference is also an opportunity to involve parents in the organization and planning of a mentoring organization otherwise primarily run by teenagers. Teenagers could take the view that their mentoring program was a best effort but informal and might sometimes benefit from adult advice. A mentor conference would be an opportunity to present the organization and its program(s) and to invite adults to join an advisory committee. A mentor conference is well-suited because it may give a mentoring organization a formal background where it can present itself and, by organizing the event, prove that its members are capable to organize. Volunteers may be more likely to support an organization recognized as a serious effort.

[edit] Coopetition

Coopetition is likely to be beneficial for mentoring organizations. To promote coopetition mentoring organizations could aim to service more than one school and to help each other to find or to create more than one mentoring organization for each school. Coopetition can, for instance, mean joint preparation of mentoring conferences but competition for the better presentation or the more interesting projects or workshops.

[edit] Printed magazine

A printed magazine can have several beneficial effects. The members of the mentoring organization are motivated to cooperate to document their work and to publish new ideas. Publishing a magazine requires (and thereby can cause) a certain continuity in the work of a mentoring organization. A mentoring organization could try to fund the magazine through advertisements. An online magazine can complement the printed magazine but probably shouldn't replace the printed magazine because a printed magazine can cause a more serious effort, e.g. through a print deadline and space limitations or space that needs to be filled. Like a mentor conference a well-made printed magazine can add to the reputation of a mentoring organization.

[edit] Social bridging

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Social bridging means a mentoring organization could help to connect people who may otherwise be unlikely to leave their own social environment and communicate with the other person in more than a superficial way. This could include adult education and especially, of course, parent education.

[edit] Donations

A mentoring organization with sources of income should have a planned budget. Money that isn't required for the budget should at least be considered for donation. A mentoring organization might want to put aside money for expensive purchases occasionally but otherwise making money is not a commendable goal for a mentoring organization. Money allocated for donation can, for instance, be spend for good gifts or OLPC laptops, depending on the votes of the organization members. Donations require a vote because the organization as a whole bears the responsibility of making good use of economic resources allocated for general welfare. Another rationale is the beneficial psychological effect for the decision makers to make a responsible and beneficial decision in common public interest, which is why the decision making process shouldn't be restricted to (e.g.) a donations committee.

[edit] Public contribution

[edit] Preschool, Kindergarten, Child care

A mentoring organization can associate with one or several preschools, day-care centers and youth centers and offer to help them when possible. A mentoring organization could, for instance, help to organize kindergarten internships.

A mentoring organization could decide to demand a kindergarten internship as a precondition to be accepted as a mentor.

[edit] Code of conduct

A mentoring organization could phrase a code of conduct for its members. Since the active mentors of a mentoring organization can be expected to be a very dynamic group it would make sense to hold one meeting per year where the code of conduct and possibly other guidelines of the organization were reviewed and amended to reflect the opinions of the active members. This would also provide an opportunity to exercise democratic skills.

A sensible code of conduct could, for instance, state that a mentor should teach, or arrange for the protégé to learn, first what the protégé wanted to learn, second what the protégé needed to learn, third what the protégé was expected to learn and last what the mentor wanted to teach. Putting the last point on the list is rather a warning to avoid that than an invitation to address the other issues quickly to get to the more interesting bit.

[edit] Tradition

Unlike a code of conduct a tradition would be something that is an obligation to members of the organization because it is expected, not because it is a moral obligation. A mentoring organization could, for instance, decide on an organizational tradition that a mentor was expected to give a well considered book as a present to his protégés on their birthdays. The restriction to a book would be adequate for a learning community.

[edit] Mentoring teams

Responsible assignments should be given to committees, not to individuals; doesn't that make mentoring a team effort? A mentoring team can have different modes for cooperation but in any case the protégé should get to know all of the mentors in a team. It is not useful if a mentor is seen solely as a proxy and never gets to know the protégé properly. One could, of course, decide that each mentor in a team is the primary mentor of one protégé and additional mentor to the protégés of his colleagues. In that case it is probably interesting to define the difference between the responsibilities of the primary mentor and the additional mentors.

[edit] Evaluation

A team of mentors can help to evaluate the work of a primary mentor. If the additional mentors in a team of mentors are not convinced that the primary mentor is capable to be a good mentor or is neglecting his duties then the additional mentors have the duty to bring the issue to the attention of a discontinuation committee or another board of the organisation with the authority to recommend (or cause) the end of the formal assignment.

Ending a formal assignment means that the organization declares, according to its policies, that the assignment is discontinued, whether the mentor continues as a natural mentor and what type of relationship mentor and protégé should have afterwards is their personal decision, of course. The organization should assign a new formal mentor if the protégé appears to require a mentor or requests a mentor.

[edit] Private tutors

Mentors can help to organize private tutors for their protégés. A group of three to five protégés who meet with a private tutor occasionally can benefit from the more thorough attention of the teacher in the small group. The more private atmosphere can help to train self management skills that may become useful during homework without a tutor, consequently a private tutor can also be useful for pupils who do not have any knowledge gaps. A learning group should be homogeneous in its educational background.

[edit] Anti-patterns

An anti-pattern is a commonly reinvented bad solution to a problem, or just a common type of problem (in a wider sense).

[edit] Mentor from Mars

For a mentoring organization without a sufficiently established formal procedure and qualified pedagogues or psychologists a guided mentorship should probably be seen as something to avoid (an anti-pattern). If in doubt a teenager should probably not be allowed to act as a mentor for the organization. Especially an organization primarily run by teenagers might want to maintain a good reputation and not assign mentors with arguable qualification. Anybody unqualified as a mentor could, of course, be seen as a potential protégé; what better qualification could a serious mentoring organization generally aim for than to qualify its protégés as future mentors? One could ask protégés to accept the goal to qualify as a mentor without any obligation to become a mentor.

[edit] Rivaling mentors

"Rivaling mentors" describes cooperation between different mentors (possibly from different mentoring organizations) that reduces or negates the beneficial effects of mentoring.

• Mentors can fail to cooperate and, without knowing, work against each other's goals (possibly due to different views of the same situation).
• Mentors can fail to cooperate appropriately, which may lead to conflict of interests between mentors and can bring the protégé to adopt a negative view of the mentors or mentoring in general.
• Mentors can silently delegate responsibility to other mentors, who may do the same. The end result is that no single mentor accepts sufficient responsibility for the protégé.
• Any combination of the above.

[edit] Rules of the organization

An organization requires a set of rules. Unlike a code of conduct the rules (or policies) may also determine what the organization can do or must do, not just what an individual can do or must do. The rules should be determined by the members but to allow the members to invent sensible rules some questions may be helpful:

• Who determines rules? (Which group? How many people are required? How and when is the speaker of the group determined? Where and when must the group meet?)
• How must rules be communicated, written down or published in order to be operative?
• How are mentoring assignments made? Is there one committee or are there several committees? Who determines the members?
• Who can end an assignment and under which conditions? Is there one committee or are there several committees? Who determines the members?
• Who is the treasurer and what are his obligations? (e.g. documentation of income and expenses - how and when?)
• What are necessary criteria for a protégé?
• What are necessary criteria for a mentor? Are there different types of mentors? Who can disqualify a mentor and how?
• What are the official goals of the organization?

If you want to write rules you should understand the difference between representative democracy and direct democracy. Adults are generally helpful to learn more about democracy and to gather ideas for your policy framework.

[edit] Intellectual development of the protégé

The text in its current form is incomplete.

A mentor should be aware of the intellectual development of his protégé. A mentor may have to help to recognize a need for coaching lessons and a mentor might want to maintain an individual curriculum together with the protégé, both requires an understanding for the developing education and intellectual development of the protégé.

[edit] Interesting math problems

The intellectual development of a protégé may benefit significantly from interesting mathematical problems. This may sometimes be quite a challenge for the mentor, especially when a protégé is frequently confronted with uninteresting mathematical exercises and may not easily associate mathematics with interesting topics. The goal of the mentor could be to find problems in the sphere of interest of the protégé that connect to mathematical problems that could present the protégé with challenges that matched his mathematical skills. This could be seen as a continual challenge throughout secondary education as long as the protégé might benefit from the additional motivation. A source of interesting math problems can, for example, be hard science fiction (only for a protégé interested in science fiction, of course).

See also: Individual curriculum: Logic (Assistant teacher course, Wikiversity)

[edit] Mentoring strategies

The protégé is uninterested in a topic 

Find something that is interesting to the protégé and proceed from there. This can either be something new or something that has been sufficiently interesting in the past. If there's no connection to what you intended to do or intended to talk about then you may have to accept that for the moment. A mentor should aim primarily to be an adviser to his protégé in topics relevant to the protégé and only secondarily provide further motivation for topics seen as relevant for the protégé by the mentor. A mentor could make it a habit to delay replies frequently with the comment that he needed to think about the matter. This could also be used as an opportunity to combine topics relevant to the protégé with important issues the protégé wasn't prepared to accept as relevant.

[edit] Mentoring activities

[edit] Community building

Community building as a mentor means you want to introduce your protégé to people who are interesting or relevant to him or her. If the community your protégé would like does not exist you can help to build it. If you are member of an organization that can make this task much easier. The organization may have other members who have similar problems and can join you, it may be able to provide contacts outside the organization or it may just provide a name so people can contact you with more confidence; the organization may have a reputation your mobile phone number hasn't. Community building can be eased if you have access to a local area wiki or you can organize one. In this case you could see it as an obligation to be available as a mediator or administrator in the wiki, especially if it is mostly frequented by younger pupils.

[edit] Coaching lessons

A mentor can offer coaching lessons but more importantly a mentor should recognize the need for coaching lessons early and help to organize them. There is actually a drawback if a mentor joins or provides coaching lessons him - or herself. A pupil who needs coaching lessons may not like to learn the subject matter. If the mentor has no near-perfect solution for the problem he may strain the relationship towards his protégé unnecessarily. To recognize the need for coaching lessons a mentor may have to talk to the teachers of his protégé once in a while; this is where a mentoring organization may become useful. Without an organization behind him the mentor could be seen as just another pupil.

[edit] Individual curriculum

A mentor can try to provide an individual curriculum to his or her protégés. An advantage of writing down an individual curriculum for a protégé is that parents, protégé and mentor can agree on at least one goal of the mentorship. A more formal approach can help to make sure a mentorship doesn't disappoint expectations. To agree on an individual curriculum the mentor could discuss with the protégé what he or she would like to learn and then try to refine the wishes of the protégé so that the curriculum gets sensible connections to either school education, vocational education or other areas of general education. If a protégé could choose topics for school projects (e.g. qualifying projects) that may, for instance, be a good connection between the goals of an individual curriculum and school education. Of course, a mentor could also interview parents and try to include some of their wishes into an individual curriculum.

Examples for interdisciplinary subjects or subjects that may easily connect with the curriculum but which may not be commonly available are astronomy, electronics, nutritional science, human biology / medicine, microscopy, robotics, technology, psychology, philosophy, agricultural science, citizenship education and uncommon languages.

See also: Individual curriculum (Assistant teacher course, Wikiversity)

[edit] Parenting advice

A mentor may not be particularly qualified to give parenting advice but he may have attended a parent education course and may be able to give useful advice as an outside observer who may be able to notice, for instance, the force of habit in a family.

Of course one could see parents in need of parent education, in a way, as protégés but it is probably undiplomatic to use the actual term; a mentor may nevertheless recognize a similar moral obligation. The obligation can be better addressed by an organization in the form of parent education courses and, where necessary, withdrawing a parenting driver's license or parenting awards.

[edit] Intercultural competence in the family

Intercultural competence in the family is the idea to give the world views and views in a family a name and to reveal the inherent problems on the way. To make this more funny one can look for long, amusing names with a lot of dashes to describe all of the relevant world views and views of somebody's "personal culture". Names should contain some components that give them the appearance of philosophies, which should, of course, try to approximate the established meaning where possible. This way discrepancies and disagreements can be revealed as a side-effect and a mentor can help the family members to mediate on a more formal level between the individual "cultural backgrounds" of the family members. This isn't restricted to families that actually have an intercultural background. Teenagers can have quite different views than adults but teenagers may also easily disagree with other teenagers or adults may disagree with other adults in their world views and views.

What can also be interesting for a mentor is to collect the views of family members about other family members. Disagreements between the self-description of family members and descriptions given by others can also be very revealing. Mentors can try this out within the mentoring organization with other mentors they know well enough or within their own families. To allow mentors to learn about the potential of this method a mentoring organization should offer advice and the chance for experimentation. A mentor also needs a certain knowledge of advisable terms to be able to help phrasing names for "personal cultures".

[edit] Questionnaire

An individual questionnaire for protégé and parents, written by the mentor, may be a good way for the mentor to assess the situation of a protégé and, by the way, for the parents to notice what the mentor had thought of or was prepared to notice. This may be quite interesting for parents with curiosity about the thinking of the mentor.

A good mode for filling out the questionnaires may be to have both parents (and, possibly, the protégé) fill out the questionnaires at the same time without mutual consultation, except where they insisted on consultation or on answering verbally and not in writing. The offer to answer some questions verbally should probably be an explicit option of the questionnaire. A mentor would have to show diplomacy and tact in deciding what belonged on a questionnaire and what should be discussed instead, when in doubt the offer to answer some questions verbally may be helpful.

[edit] Summer camps

A sufficiently large and well-organized mentoring organization could organize their own summer camps, a smaller group could evaluate interesting summer camps, join the organizers of choice and recommend the summer camps to their protégés and the friends of their protégés.

[edit] Summer school

As with summer camps a mentoring organization could either offer a summer school or join the organizers of choice in their efforts, both for remedial instruction and for advanced topics (e.g. in relation to the individual curricula of their protégés).

[edit] Game mentoring

[edit] Computer games

Computer games can be an important topic for mentors. The reason is that computer games may consume a lot of time and can have a significant influence on the protégé. Adults may also often not be able to stay sufficiently informed about recent computer games so a teenage mentor may be the only adviser for a protégé, concerning computer games, who has a much different focus than other game players.

While violent games do not make children violent, at least not in general, computer games can make people nervous and hectic through stimulus satiation, can provide people with a frequent feeling of success and can have an influence on a person's attention span. A sense of achievement can be used for beneficial goals or it can be used for plain entertainment. The attention span can be influenced in a positive or in a negative way. Computer games can also train many different skills and can provide intellectual challenges. Whether positive effects or negative effects prevail depends on the selection of games a child or teenager plays. Many teenagers make choices about games themselves and without any advice, except from other gamers who enjoy the same or similar games.

A mentor may not have any authority to influence the choice of games and probably shouldn't aim to gain that authority but a mentor could explain to the protégé what positive effects computer games, edutainment software and other programs can have and what negative effects are conceivable. A mentor could also keep informed about the favorite games of his protégé and advise the parents about the games and alternatives. This can, of course, easily be taken too far. If the protégé would get the impression that the mentor was using his parents to exert indirect pressure that could unnecessarily strain the relationship between protégé and mentor. The primary goal of the mentor should be to give advice, not to attain goals of his own.

Many games may remain interesting for a player after the intellectual challenge has gone. A mentor could try to keep an eye on the current games of his protégé and actively recommend new games or different activities (if gaming had become too prevalent).

A protégé with a strong interest in computer games probably needs a mentor with a similar interest, otherwise a mentor may just be unable to give sufficiently informed advice. The mentor should, of course, put mentoring over gaming or the protégé may just have met another gamer, which is not to say that the mentor shouldn't play some computer games with the protégé on occasion.

A portal with an emphasis on the educational aspects of computer games is available in the education wiki at wikia.^{[Software Recension Portal]}

See also: Game psychology (wiki.laptop.org)

[edit] Groups, programs and goals

[edit] Educational goals

[edit] Civic education

Citizenship education should belong to the educational goals of a mentor by default. What can be done or should be done in the area of civic education depends on what a school or school system already provides with a certain reliability or what the personal needs of a protégé in this area are. Education for democracy can, for instance, be part of group events: The mentors can leave out essential parts of the organization and leave it to the protégés to invent democratic procedures. A comment like "That still needs to be addressed." should be enough to make the protégés invent democratic procedures without guidance and if they fail to do so it may be a useful experience to allow them to try without democratic procedures. The mentors could even "help" along with comments like "Who decided that? Let's do it our way." An event could even be more fun without democracy but the mentors could still explain afterwards that the planning was a failure. A next step could be to install democratic procedures that needed to be replaced, which could require decision by consensus.

A mentoring organization should have a documented view and concepts for civic education, possibly taking into consideration the circumstances at local schools.

[edit] Self-management

[edit] Time management

A mentor should identify a protégé's need to learn about time management. If the protégé doesn't appear to have an obvious need to learn time management it doesn't hurt to give some advice in the area, even if already known. Reminding a protégé about things he already knows is an area where a mentor can perform significantly better than many parents because parents often feel obliged to remind about too many things, so the interest of the teenager to heed the advice may be reduced through the amount of advice given. A mentor has more time to consider what advice seems important and what would just make the protégé lose interest.

A mentor could, for instance, pay attention to trends in the behavior of the protégé and alert him to increasing or decreasing time consumption of activities considered relevant and put the developments into relation to the declared higher-order volitions of the protégé.

[edit] Preparing protégés to become mentors

What qualifications a mentor needs depends on the mentoring organization. In any case the work of a mentor can have more than one beneficial effect for the mentor. Seeking to actively qualify protégés to become mentors, notwithstanding the fact if a protégé is likely to make that choice, seems a worthwhile goal. A mentor can offer to a protégé to leave the question whether to become a mentor or not open and to qualify just for the merit of the qualification. Consequently a protégé should be guided to get some education in pedagogy, psychology and whatever else was seen as lacking for the protégé to qualify as a mentor.

[edit] From fun to serious work

Fun can be very useful to motivate children and teenagers to learn or to participate in something that may otherwise not be sufficiently interesting. A sense of achievement can also contribute to the fun of an activity and is especially valuable in learning activities. If fun is a predominant motivation, however, a protégé may learn to rely on the entertainment value of an activity for motivation. A mentor could see it as an obligation to counter that effect, especially if the protégé relied too much on entertainment value. An activity can, for instance, be modified on occasion to avoid fun and entertainment. A mentor can work with the protégé to isolate what is funny or entertaining about an activity and then try to structure a "serious work" task to avoid fun and entertainment. From analyzing the entertainment value of an activity mentor and protégé can also learn something about the psychological effects involved.

Teenagers who like to program, for instance, enjoy their work because it is creative, challenging and can provide a frequent sense of achievement. Once a protégé had identified programming as a hobby a mentor could aim to present the protégé with some programming tasks that were carefully arranged to spoil the fun in order to allow the protégé to learn a more serious approach.

[edit] Health topics

In Germany 16% of all children are overweight and 6% of the children are obese. 85% of the affected children still suffer from excess weight as adults. (Source: see sidebox).

[edit] Sportive goals

The text in its current form is incomplete.

[edit] Individual fitness program

A mentor wanting to help with sportive goals, which may, depending on the protégé, be an obligation, could try out a health club together with the protégé. A mentor could, of course, also devise an individual fitness program inside school or outside school and motivate the protégé to follow through with it.

[edit] Morning run

A mentor could also organize a morning run before breakfast for a group of protégés and friends, which would allow the mentor to observe the protégés' dependability, discipline and sportiness. Mentors living close by can run with their own protégés, mentors living farther away can swap with other mentors.

[edit] Balanced diet

The text in its current form is incomplete.

[edit] Intermittent fasting

The text in its current form is incomplete.

Intermittent fasting may be a good health advice. At the same time it could present a recurring opportunity for a mentor to encourage a protégé to follow a sensible higher-order volition and to measure the protégé's ability to follow the higher-order volition, once identified as a desirable goal. (A goal could be not to eat anything on a specific day of the week)

In a summer camp or on a day trip mentors would occasionally have the chance to actually observe the protégé's behavior; otherwise a mentor could offer advice and motivation but should probably better avoid any pressure towards an unenforceable goal. Obviously mentors could aim to be good examples even when some or all protégés decided against their advice.

A joint breakfast or brunch on a Sunday could complement a fasting day on Saturday.

An age recommendation for protégés is avoided intentionally; a responsible mentor should consult with a health professional in this matter.

TODO: read [2], [3], [4] (from Wikipedia article), look for other sources.

See also: benefits only the young (disputed), healthy diet, nutritional rating systems

[edit] Leisure offers

A continual goal for a mentor could be to find and organize leisure offers for his or her protégés according to the personal preferences of the protégés and according to what the mentor saw as sensible and the protégés could be interested in.

[edit] Mentors as holiday entertainers

A mentor can offer his service as a tutor at his own discretion and likewise a mentor can offer his service as an entertainer. The primary goal of a mentor should be that of a beneficial adviser but a mentor should be willing to at least help occasionally with what may not otherwise be possible for a protégé or what may benefit from the presence of the mentor. The protégé should of course not be brought to believe that his mentor is always his personal entertainer, football coach or whatever else the protégé may wish for.

In order to lead a protégé to respect the difference a mentor might want to maintain an attitude of listening to what the protégé wants and then telling him what he really wants. Of course that could easily be taken too far if the mentor passed the protégé over and decided what the protégé should do without taking his wishes into account. In order to find the right balance a mentor might want to consider requests of the protégé for a while. The right answer for a new request would consequently always be "I will think about it." (and making a note). Just from observing the mentor acting prudently the protégé can learn to follow the observed example. A mentor could make it a principle to construct a connection to either the individual curriculum or other educational goals whenever possible. That shouldn't rule out just for fun activities entirely, of course.

[edit] Events

What kind of events a group of mentors could organize for their protégés depends significantly on your country and culture.

Fiction writers convention 

Meet in a sufficiently large house (e.g. a school on a weekend or during the holidays or in a community center) and organize workshops for radio dramas. To make it more interesting the plays could be interactive multi-user fiction but only with the elements of music, speech and text. Text and sound could conveniently be organized in a wiki and the software of the play could be written by mentors and qualified protégés to access the media from the wiki. Obviously the wiki should not be open before the convention to discourage disproportionate prior organization and planning for the plays.

Rationale: The planning and writing of a play and the recording of the sounds effects can create a lot of fun but requires an extra effort and motivates the meeting, which might seem superfluous to just write some text. An interactive multi-user radio play would appeal more to the imagination than an interactive movie and create a different atmosphere than a multi-user text adventure. The creation of appealing graphics and videos might also be too difficult for the protégés.

Video documentary competition 

Form teams and agree on topics for documentaries. Watch some professional documentaries and discuss how you could create similar effects. Send the teams to make their documentaries and show the documentaries on an evening event, preferably with parents. Form a jury and elect the best documentaries in different groups. Make enough categories so every documentary can win at least in one category.

Day trip 

Mentors could offer day trips during the holidays.

[edit] Book project

A book project can be an interesting and entertaining project. The creative group work is good for community building and can inspire new thought processes in the participants. A book could be developed in a wiki and could be printed as book-on-demand when finished. Participants should probably be at least 14-15 years old (ninth grade). As a mentoring organization you could, for example, write your own mentoring handbook. If the resulting work was good enough it could be distributed to interested parties outside your organization. A part of your own book, with regional applicability only and thereby adding to the motivation to write your own book, could be a section with leisure offers for teenagers in your region with a special view on the concerns of mentors.

[edit] Fiction

Fiction books do have the advantage that you can allow your imagination full scope. There may still be a lot of planning and researching to do if your book is set in the real world. To coordinate the work of the independent authors you have to agree on a schedule of events and on the personalities, activities and knowledge of the characters at any given time in your book. You may also have to research actual conditions at places you describe in the book. It may be a good idea to put a certain emphasis on getting the facts right, so that the book project has a connection to the real world and interests the participants in researching facts.

[edit] Non-fiction

Writing non-fiction books can also allow creative and entertaining group work, although a non-fiction book imposes more restrictions. What may be quite challenging is to write a book that is both educational and interesting for younger pupils or even for teenagers of the same age. A good example is the above mentioned mentoring handbook. If you think your school books are not interesting enough you can also write your own supplementary literature to school books.

[edit] Literature

1. ↑ ^{a b} DuBois, David L., Michael J. Karcher (2005). Handbook of Youth Mentoring. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications Ltd. ISBN 0761929770.
2. ↑ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): Universal Declaration of Human Rights
3. ↑ United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children's Rights and Responsibilities leaflet)
4. ↑ ^{a b} Children's TV Lexicon (Wikijunior, Wikibooks)

• Baylor University's Community Mentoring for Adolescent Development (CMAD) Mentor Trainer's Manual

[edit] External links

• Parenting driver's license (Wikiversity)
• ATP mentor training (Wikiversity)

[edit] German

• Wikinews: World Vision presents survey „Children in Germany 2007“ (13% of all children, 28% of the children of unemployed parents and 35% of the children of employed single parents complain about a lack of parental dedication. In families with two parents working full-time this applies to 17% of the children, in families with one parent working full-time and one parent working part-time or both parents working part-time it applies to 8% of the children and in families with only one of two parents employed it applies to 6% of the children.)

[edit] Online advice

• Erziehungsberatung über Internet (Wikipedia)
• bke.de -- Bundeskonferenz für Erziehungsberatung (Wikipedia: bke-Gütesiegel)