Mentors Matter
MVU - Project for shared resources
Please find on this webpage a plethora of materials to help delve deeper into this concept.
RKT
Mentor Fundamentals: A Guide for Mentoring Online Learners
The mentor, student, parent, and online instructor form a team to help students become proficient online learners and successfully complete their courses. This resource is intended to provide an understanding of the fundamental elements of mentoring or coaching students for success with online courses and has been prepared with the assistance and insight of experienced mentors, instructors, administrators, and customer service representatives from Michigan Virtual School® (MVS®).
This guide describes the roles and responsibilities of the mentor and contains tools to prepare mentors for working with online learners. We hope you find this resource helpful and, if you are a mentor, that you enjoy mentoring. Thank you for your dedication. Whether you are a mentor, parent, student, counselor, administrator, or someone else who has an interest in mentors and mentoring.
Please send questions and concerns or provide feedback to mentor@mivu.org. Parental involvement and support of online learners is extremely important. From determining if online learning is a good choice for your student to providing a space for studying at home to monitoring your student’s progress every week to communicating with the mentor, parents have a great impact on student success. See the Parent Guide to Online Learning for detailed information about online learning, the characteristics of a successful online learner, and how to prepare for learning online.
Please click on link below for document
Website: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2LvNPwzivxNRHRpeUVjMXZRQ1U/view?usp=sharing
Hi Richard!
My name is Justin Bruno, and I work as a research associate at Michigan Virtual University. I believe we’ve met a couple times, once here on site for a virtual school summit, and once more recently for a STW meeting that you organized at the GISD. I’m reaching out to you to see if you’d be interested in contributing to a new program that we are developing here at MVU. The program, called Mentors Matter, is dedicated to helping support the practice for mentoring online students in Michigan. One of the activities that we are starting up is posting short articles/blogs from practitioners from around the state on our Mentors Matter website every month. Having seen your passion and dedication demonstrated multiple times through work that you are doing at Swartz Creek, you seem just the type of person we are hoping will be willing to contribute to our effort to help mentors from around the state support the success of their online students.
Our program is focused on the importance of relationships in learning success. We are building our content and workshops around how educators can help students by expressing care, challenging growth, providing support, and other actions to build relationships. Our work is based on the research of the Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships Framework. Every month we are aggregating articles from and interviews with practitioners, researchers and experts on a specific set of topics. Over the next 12 months we hope to create a collection of articles that mentors can reference and contribute to through the Mentors Matter website. The collaboration of practitioners and experts will weave a great resource for mentors. It’s critical we have voices like yours participating in this endeavor. Authenticity and practical application are key goals.
Would you be interested in arranging a time to meet for a recorded interview/discussion? We would travel to your district with all of our recording equipment so that we can capture and share our discussion online. We recently met with the coordinator at SOAR Academic Institute in South Redford, MI, and you can see a snippet of our conversation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYipXkPsTqU. If you’d like to participate, we’d be interested in arranging a time within the next week or two to come visit with you.
The Mentors Matter program is provider agnostic and is funded through the Michigan legislature to train mentors and effect the outcomes of online learning in Michigan. Even though I’m reaching out to you because of our shared familiarity with MVS, any contribution is not tied to MVS. I’m hoping that your possible contribution will not only be beneficial to your colleagues, but also draw attention to the successes of your program. We will only ask for the rights to use your independent work in the scope of the Mentors Matter program; our recorded interview will also be provided to you for you to use in whatever way you’d like.
If you have any questions or concerns or would like to talk about anything further, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Thank you so much and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
--------------
Justin Bruno
Research Associate
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, MVU
Office: 517-664-5465
Postal Address: Michigan Virtual University, 3101 Technology Blvd., Suite G, Lansing, MI 48910 USA
MVU® Michigan Virtual School® Michigan LearnPort® Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute®
P Please consider the environment before printing this email.
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. This communication may represent the originator's personal views, opinions, conclusions and other information which do not necessarily reflect those of MVU and are not given nor endorsed by MVU unless otherwise specified. If you are not the original recipient or the person responsible for delivering the email to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error, and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you received this email in error, please immediately notify jbruno@mivu.org
VIRUS WARNING: All reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure no viruses are present in this e-mail or any attachments. However, MVU cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage arising from the use of this e-mail or attachments and recommends that you subject this e-mail and any attachments to your own virus scanning procedures prior to viewing or opening.
UCE (SPAM) NOTE: MVU takes an aggressive approach to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). All UCE sent to this e-mail address will be forwarded with complete Internet headers to various anti-spam blacklisting agencies; and all UCE with non-working or fraudulent opt-out mechanisms will be forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission for investigation and possible prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
Hi Richard,
Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and willingness to participate! I’ve included some guiding questions and topics for our interview. We’ll look forward to seeing you next Thursday, 2/11 at 2:45pm. If you could let us know the address of where we should head to and any other directions we might need once we’re on site, we’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
• How important is the notion of challenging growth in your students in your online mentoring program?
• Please provide some practical examples of things that you already do to demonstrate the following:
Inspiring students to see future possibilities in themselves
Setting expectations for students and helping them meet their potential
Recognizing students’ inputs and abilities while pushing them to strengthen their abilities
Holding students accountable for appropriate boundaries and rules
• When considering future activities, how might you use the above ideas as a framework?
We’ll also be asking some contextual questions just so folks can get a good idea of the structure of your online program:
1. what a typical day is for the mentors,
2. what their training is like,
3. what kind of peer-to-peer interaction they have,
4. what parental involvement is, and
5. what kind of orientation they do for students and parents.
Justin Bruno
Research Associate
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, MVU
Office: 517-664-5465
From: Thompson, Richard [mailto:rthompson@swcrk.org]
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 4:07 PM
To: Justin Bruno <jbruno@mivu.org>
Subject: RE: Mentors Matter Program - Request for Interview
Justin
COUNT ME IN !!!!!!!!!!!!
810-591-4380
RKT
From: Justin Bruno [mailto:jbruno@mivu.org]
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 2:19 PM
To: Thompson, Richard
Subject: Mentors Matter Program - Request for Interview
Hi Richard!
My name is Justin Bruno, and I work as a research associate at Michigan Virtual University. I believe we’ve met a couple times, once here on site for a virtual school summit, and once more recently for a STW meeting that you organized at the GISD. I’m reaching out to you to see if you’d be interested in contributing to a new program that we are developing here at MVU. The program, called Mentors Matter, is dedicated to helping support the practice for mentoring online students in Michigan. One of the activities that we are starting up is posting short articles/blogs from practitioners from around the state on our Mentors Matter website every month. Having seen your passion and dedication demonstrated multiple times through work that you are doing at Swartz Creek, you seem just the type of person we are hoping will be willing to contribute to our effort to help mentors from around the state support the success of their online students.
Our program is focused on the importance of relationships in learning success. We are building our content and workshops around how educators can help students by expressing care, challenging growth, providing support, and other actions to build relationships. Our work is based on the research of the Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships Framework. Every month we are aggregating articles from and interviews with practitioners, researchers and experts on a specific set of topics. Over the next 12 months we hope to create a collection of articles that mentors can reference and contribute to through the Mentors Matter website. The collaboration of practitioners and experts will weave a great resource for mentors. It’s critical we have voices like yours participating in this endeavor. Authenticity and practical application are key goals.
Would you be interested in arranging a time to meet for a recorded interview/discussion? We would travel to your district with all of our recording equipment so that we can capture and share our discussion online. We recently met with the coordinator at SOAR Academic Institute in South Redford, MI, and you can see a snippet of our conversation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYipXkPsTqU. If you’d like to participate, we’d be interested in arranging a time within the next week or two to come visit with you.
The Mentors Matter program is provider agnostic and is funded through the Michigan legislature to train mentors and effect the outcomes of online learning in Michigan. Even though I’m reaching out to you because of our shared familiarity with MVS, any contribution is not tied to MVS. I’m hoping that your possible contribution will not only be beneficial to your colleagues, but also draw attention to the successes of your program. We will only ask for the rights to use your independent work in the scope of the Mentors Matter program; our recorded interview will also be provided to you for you to use in whatever way you’d like.
If you have any questions or concerns or would like to talk about anything further, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Thank you so much and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
--------------
Justin Bruno
Research Associate
Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, MVU
Office: 517-664-5465
Postal Address: Michigan Virtual University, 3101 Technology Blvd., Suite G, Lansing, MI 48910 USA
MVU® Michigan Virtual School® Michigan LearnPort® Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute®
P Please consider the environment before printing this email.
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. This communication may represent the originator's personal views, opinions, conclusions and other information which do not necessarily reflect those of MVU and are not given nor endorsed by MVU unless otherwise specified. If you are not the original recipient or the person responsible for delivering the email to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error, and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you received this email in error, please immediately notify jbruno@mivu.org
VIRUS WARNING: All reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure no viruses are present in this e-mail or any attachments. However, MVU cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage arising from the use of this e-mail or attachments and recommends that you subject this e-mail and any attachments to your own virus scanning procedures prior to viewing or opening.
UCE (SPAM) NOTE: MVU takes an aggressive approach to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). All UCE sent to this e-mail address will be forwarded with complete Internet headers to various anti-spam blacklisting agencies; and all UCE with non-working or fraudulent opt-out mechanisms will be forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission for investigation and possible prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
Justin and Ken
It was an honor to have you come out to the Academy.
I look forward to working with you on this most needed asset for our mentors and educators and most importantly our students.
Please feel free to use any of the links below for your project at hand for the greater good of the realm.
Let’s connect about a day in May for the…
Seat Time Wavier Forum and Mentor Matters forum at the Genesee ISD .
Richard
Below are just a few of my creations and compilations for empowerment…
Welcome – for Mentors…
Students don’t care
R.U.L.Z.
Culture of Learning
Data Portfolio – Students
App
http://sca.4yourmobile.com/landing/Desktop#.VsTNyfkrJqM
Search Institute
Done is Good
https://www.smore.com/dqnfe-done-is-good
Done Do Decree
ROSE Bud Award for Mentors
MVU-OLOT
The Bamboo Story…
https://drive.google.com/a/swcrk.org/file/d/0B93J0pmTfS18clhkcm5qWFRTSjA/view