Phase 3: Facilitating Learning

Facilitating learning is the phase where you will spend most of your mentoring time.

Let's take a glance at some of the key concepts that relate to this phase and then look at four specific aspects of facilitating learning: support, vision, challenge, and feedback.

The Shifting of the Mentoring Paradigm

For many years people viewed a mentor as the "sage on the stage." The mentee sat at the feet of the "master" and listened.

The paradigm has shifted.

Mentors are facilitators, rather than authority figures, guiding the mentee in the discovery process, and providing resources and support to assist mentees in achieving their learning goals.

This shift in the role of mentor has resulted in a shift in the role of the mentee. The mentee is an active participant in the mentoring learning process.

Traditionally, mentors would tell their mentee what they needed to know and do. Mentoring now is more self-directed.

Mentoring used to be about acquiring key knowledge and information that was really only known to the mentor. Today, mentoring is more about promoting the mentee's critical thinking and reflection.

The next chart summarizes the shift in mentoring over time.

Mentoring Has Shifted in Four Ways

So let's get more specific…

Let's see how this shift plays out inside a mentoring relationship.

Teaching and Mentoring Are Not the Same

Teaching

• Imparts information
• Builds skills
• Helps individual develop cognitive skills and capabilities
• Acts as an instructor
• Is teacher-led

Mentoring

• Facilitates mentee self-discovery
• Builds capability and confidence
• Acts as a guide
• Is mentee-driven

Mentors Are Facilitators

Here are some ways in which mentors facilitate learning.

Mentors relate to their mentees' real issues and concerns.

• Make learning relevant and timely to keep your mentee engaged and interested, and see the value in the learning.

Mentors allow time for participants mentees integrate and reflect on information.

• Assist mentees in piecing together what they are learning by encouraging them to reflect their past experiences and their future capability.

Mentors use a variety of approaches to create interest and draw on different learning preferences and needs of the learner.

• Everyone learns differently and you need to take responsibility for understanding the best approach to help your mentee learn.

Mentors respect individual unique needs and cultural differences.

• View differences as an opportunity to learn new approaches. Demonstrate sensitivity to the cultural uniqueness of their mentee.

Mentors involve students and tap into young innovators' unique experiences.

• Take time to draw out the interests and experiences of your mentee and use them as links to learning.

Mentors encourage young innovators to reflect on past experiences and use them as learning opportunities.

• Ask your mentee questions to help him or her relate current challenges to ones faced before and help your mentee determine an effective course of action.

Mentors show flexibility and openness to new ideas.

• Not every idea regarding the mentoring process should come from you. Your mentee has ideas or approaches. Being open to your mentee's ideas demonstrates respect and builds trust.

Mentors appear confident and competent.

• Inspire confidence by projecting a strong sense of self and purpose, along with your experience and expertise.
• Facilitate mentee learning by organizing information and activities that enhance learning and sets your mentee up for success.

Mentors inspire and build student confidence and competence.

• Help your mentees recognize their talents and create learning opportunities that set them up for success.

Mentors create a positive, safe learning environment.

• Recognize that mentees need to feel comfortable and confident in order to get out of their comfort zone and take risks.

Facilitating Mentee Learning

There are four main ways to facilitate mentee learning by providing:

• support to their development as innovators,
• opportunities to develop an innovative vision,
• challenges to their thinking, and
• feedback that is both motivating and informative.

Facilitating Mentee Learning: Support

During the mentoring process, providing support to your mentee helps them to grow and learn.

Here are some ways that you can support your mentee:

• Listen actively
• Show empathy
• Provide positive feedback to build trust
• Create a safe space to learn
• Share yourself
• Provide structure to help make learning accessible and easier
• Express positive expectations of the outcome

Can you think of other ways in which you could demonstrate support to your mentee?

Facilitating Mentee Learning: Vison

During the mentoring process, help your mentee define and realize a vision of themselves and their goals as they begin the innovation process. Here are some ways that you can help your mentee develop a vision:

• Hold up a mirror and talk about your mentee's potential
• Be a positive role model
• Regularly review progress
• Focus on successes
• Offer a road map on how to be successful

What else can you do to inspire a vision?

Facilitating Mentee Learning: Challenge

During the mentoring process, it is important to challenge your mentee to help them grown and learn. The challenge you provide should be hard, but do-able. If the challenge is too hard, your mentee will become discouraged and anxious. If the challenge is too easy, your mentee will be bored and distracted. So, it is important to create just the right amount of challenge to motivate your mentee's creativity and innovating thinking.

Here are a few methods for challenging mentees:

• Present a challenging problem for them to solve. Be sure to be open to out-of-the box solutions and challenge them to follow through with them.
• Encourage them to take the lead in seeking a solution to a problem. Taking a leadership role can lead to new and collaborative ideas.
• Set high standards. Most mentees will work hard to achieve a challenging task.

Can you think of other ways to challenge your young innovator mentee? If so, write them in the text box below.

• Set up tasks that provide challenge, such as a brainstorming task to come up with a solution to a given problem or challenge for an "elevator pitch" he can use at an innovation competition.

• Engage in discussion. For example, you might ask your young innovator's to voice her thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of another student's innovation idea. Engagement in this type of discussion benefits your mentee because it is often challenging for young students to constructively critique another's ideas. But it also benefits the student's whose idea has been critiqued, leading to even better ideas.

• Ask probing questions. Ask probing, creative questions that challenge your mentee. Require him to think creatively when answering them. Examples are "What is someone doesn't like your innovation? What would you do?" Or "Who is the target audience for your innovation? Why did you make that choice?" Or "What if it doesn't work the way you think it will? What will you do?"

• Provide authentic problem solving experiences. This is particularly relevant to young innovators, for example by posing a specific need or problem in the community and asking your mentee to come up with some solution options.

• Encourage them to take the lead. Sometimes, a young innovator needs to be encouraged to demonstrate her leadership skills, particularly in front of other young innovators who they may perceive as being more creative or more experienced than herself. Encouragement can help build your mentee's confidence.

• Provide an assignment or reading for discussion. Go to The Innovation Destination website and select an inspiring young innovator video clip or set of clips for your young innovator to watch.

• Set a high standard. Once you and your young innovator have established a mentoring relationship, she will try to meet the high innovation standard you have set.

• Hold your mentee accountable for commitments. Children have a lot of competing activities pressing on their lives---from homework to hobbies to sports to innovation challenges. However, once your mentee has committed to going through the innovation process, it is important that he is held accountable for completing the process, regardless of outcome.

These can be some difficult challenges for your mentee. Can you think of others? Be careful that they are challenges that are intended to get your mentee to think about her innovation from different perspectives rather than being discouraging. Jot them down in the text box below.

For more tips for setting goals, check out the link below. For more resources like these, be sure to visit the Librarian Resources section of this website.

Facilitating Mentee Learning: Feedback

During the mentoring process, provide feedback to help your mentee grow and learn. Here are ways you can provide feedback that motivates and informs your mentee:

• Set the expectation that feedback is part of the mentoring process
• Provide positive feedback, early and appropriately
• Make sure your feedback is constructive
• Be comfortable with the feedback process
• Ask for feedback on your mentoring process
• Demonstrate acceptance of feedback to encourage the same in your mentee

In what other ways could you make feedback effective? Be sure to type your ideas into the text box below.

Before we proceed further on the topic of feedback…

Think about a specific occasion when someone gave you feedback about a task you performed. Perhaps it was an administrator giving you feedback about a lesson you taught or a student giving you feedback about a book she read.

• What was helpful about the feedback?
• Did anything get in your way; if so, what?
• Did anything make you feel uncomfortable; if so what?

Jot down some of your ideas in the text box below.