Thank you for those who shared that they appreciated part 1 and as promised here is part 2 so let’s go!

Youth centered: There is a clothing company that was big in the 90’s (I’m not to sure about now) but it’s name was FUBU which stood for For Us By Us. When you desire to impact and get the best out of students you must adopt a similar approach.

I never knew how advantageous my years on the coal face of doing numerous and sometime repetitive one to one mentoring sessions with students. I never understood that this was to be my years and hours of research, discovery to develop a deep and more insightful understanding of the views, feelings, challenges, failures, victories, fears and triumphs of young people as a collaborator not observer. This has given me great advantage when it now comes to student engagement.

What I discovered is to engage with students you must develop a dialogue and communication that is student centric and centered or it is just adult rhetoric that is heard but not understood. My methodology is: “done by them for them” as I have seen the commonality and then connected the integral themes important to them then translated it in into systems, resources and processes that has them at the center. So via my programmes they will never feel done to but collaborated with which is crucial to their success.

Goals:
“If you aim for nothing you can get everything” students must have goals but solely having goals like “5 C’s and above” is clearly not challenging, inspiring or aspirant enough. What is inspiring is when a student’s goals and aspirations can be strategically linked to their academic success so they are incentivized by something that “they” want. This is crucial for the buy in, because if they are to truly achieve they will need to work outside of school hours and if their goal is not more tangible / visual than Facebook or Watsapp, its a no brainer… revision will not get done! So co-creating goals is essential and linking it to their “wants” is essential.

Asset Based Approach:
Every young person has greatness in them, all they need is to explore it, identify it, nurture it and then thrive in that greatness. So it is important to have an asset based approach towards student aspiration. Too many schools focus on promoting failure, where students get support if they are not doing well. Even though this is laudable it is not inspiring especially to those who are doing well or are “alright” (have secured the grades) and are left to their own devices because they don’t present a greater need for support as someone who is failing. This is a deficit model and is how most mentoring is delivered in education in the UK, hence my call for “every” child needing a mentor.

I do believe that the playing field does need to become level but not to the exclusion of those where the playing field is already level. Someone should not be punished because things are all right what do you think? This approach is not about equity and not fair. Everyone has potential and should be supported, pushed, challenged and encouraged to experience it where possible so an asset-based model of success for all is essential.

Expect more:
“You get what you expect” This saying is so true and is one of the biggest reasons a lot of students underachieve or achieve mediocrity. “If you aim for the Sun and miss it you can get the moon and if you miss the moon you can get a star. But if you aim for the earth at best you get dirt!” this is so true and one of the reasons why lots of students achieve below their potential is because they aim low and hit it which is a travesty.

I have had times of mentoring students were down to gain at least 10 GCSE’s B and above and when I asked what they were aiming for like Dar-licks or well primed education machines they would say “I am aiming to get 5 C’s and above!” just typing this makes me feel a bit nauseous. I would challenge them to never say that again and ask them how many GCSE’s they were able to get? And then stretch their thinking to what they were on track to get at the minimum. This is a simple game changer but, lots of students are still quoting the national standard as their achievement benchmark which is not right.

Parental or Concerned Community Stakeholder Engagement:
As you can see as well as parental engagement I have listed concerned community stakeholder engagement? The reason being, sometimes the parent is the problem and the one who you want to avoid! All said and done, where possible if the engagement can be with a parent who is helpful to the process it is rightfully the best option to engage with them but when it is detrimental to the process do engage with an older sibling or an other relative of the student who they respect (or fear!).

Transforming young lives needs more than rewards of school trips of deterrents of after school detentions. The more children grow into young adults they don’t care about such punitive measures or rewards, however being grounded for a week or being banned from playing the Xbox is sacrilegious and the confiscation of the smart phone is heart stopping! So where collaboration can be fostered with home and loopholes can be plugged, this can create a great atmosphere of achievement with exponential mutual rewards for school and community.

I hope that the above helps and that you gain more insights into how to win over your students, children or other young people you engage. If you have any other golden nuggets please feel free to share in a comment, as I would love to know and even add to my toolbox.

Happy Mentoring

Image: NBCNews.com