Roles for Mentoring Teams

It is in the best interest of the mentors and students alike for the classroom responsibilities to be divided among the mentors.

Below are roles and their definitions that would ideally be assigned out for each session. Some roles can be combined for sessions with a small number of mentors.

Mentors can pick one role for the entire semester or take turns. Each session can discuss this during the first few sessions of the semester.

Facilitator / MC

Typically this role is filled by a Team Captain - but if other mentors are interested in taking on the role they are open to doing so.

• Reviews the day’s agenda with students at the beginning of a session
• At the first session, welcome and introduce students to Bold Idea, explain what they can expect during the semester (badges, projects, etc)
• Kicks off each session with an overview of the day's agenda
• During each session, helps students and mentors be aware of what to expect, what they should be working on
• Serves as timekeeper for the session, making sure everyone is starting activities, taking breaks, and making time in the end to do 3-2-1's & self-assessment.

Greeter / Attendance taker / Hospitality Specialist

• Greet parents and students as they arrive
• Takes student attendance in Hive
• Maintains a list of student and mentor birthdays if the team wants to recognize those (can be accessed via hive - contact Bold Idea staff)

Veteran Mentor

• Serves as the mentor to the mentors and offers guidance in classroom management, handling challenging situations, accessing resources on the Wiki and online, etc.
• May want to use the site’s Slack channel to share helpful tips or answer questions that could benefit the entire team
• Can update Bold Idea wiki with new resources
• This can be more than one volunteer - for example, a technical veteran for questions on curriculum and a classroom veteran for questions on working with the students.

Subject Matter Expert (SME)

• Has a lot of experience in the subjects students are learning.
• Other mentors may look to their SME when stuck on a particularly tricky problem.
• It is always helpful to have more than one SME on each team - or each mentor can take on the role of SME when students are working on projects related to their work experience/knowledge base

Activity Leader

• In charge of coming prepared with a warm-up activity or icebreaker to start off the session and also takes care of leading/facilitating it.
• In charge of also leading/facilitating brain breaks