a mentoring idea

Rhett Hudson/Chris Weaver rhett&chris at main.nc.us
Thu Jun 29 10:57:03 PDT 2000


Hi people!

I'm excited today about a new application of OS that emerged in a meeting
this morning.  I'd love feedback, especially on one particular aspect.

I'm working with a program called NCTeach, in North Carolina, which is a
newly-created way for people working in other fields to switch careers and
become public school teachers.  We have about 175 people statewide who are
making this bold transition.  They are currently in an intense summer
graduate program at six sites across the state.

I am helping to develop the structure for a mentoring program to support
these new teachers.  Mentors for new teachers are commonly assigned in a
one-to-one relationship; experienced teachers are paired up with new
teachers.  They drop by for scheduled or unscheduled meetings at the school.
Often the chemistry is not right, and the mentee-mentor relationship becomes
another source of stress for the new teacher.

Here's what I imagined today:  What if all the mentors and all the new
teachers at a particular site (say, 25 of each) attended a half-day (or more
if we can) Open Space to start things off.  The focus groups would be
convened around the needs of the new teachers.  Useful relationships would
be formed, but not in a one-to-one fashion; the new teachers would leave
that event with the names and contact info for ALL the mentors, and with
relationships with several of them based on their OS interactions.

>From then on, the new teachers would choose when, how, and from whom they
would need help.  Mentors could be paid for being available, and, hopefully,
for attending regular mini-open-spaces with the new teachers throughout the
school year.

So:  Has anyone else done this type of thing as an alternative structure of
a mentorship?

And, here's my specific question:  During the first OS, I am considering
inviting only the new teachers to convene focus groups.  On one level this
feels heretical to the spirit of Open Space.  But on another level I want to
deliberately break the set-up of the mentors being the experts.  I want the
whole program to be oriented around the needs of the new teachers, not
around the expertise of the mentors.  In my current thinking, requesting
that the mentors not convene focus groups but instead to simply attend the
ones to which they feel they can contribute the most would serve to empower
the new teachers.  WOULD YOU DO THIS?  Or is it a bad controlling idea?

Thanks a lot!

-Chris Weaver
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