What does a Middle School FLOW Group Mentoring session look like?
The Basic Layout:
- Students and teacher mentors arrive after school dismissal in designated location and students have a snack.
- Site Leader welcomes the group and explains the plan for the day.
- Teacher mentors take their mentees to their classroom or meeting location.
- Small groups have separate activity time for first hour unless a large group activity/programming is planned.
- Everyone comes together for large group activities, sports, or games for last half hour.
- Students board bus to go home.
- Teacher mentors and Site Leader have brief check-in meeting.
Activities
Planned activities may include, but are not limited to:
- Team building activities and games to build a sense of trust and community;
- Discussion topics relevant to the issues and needs of the group (in small or large groups);
- Academic activities and homework support with the intention of drawing connections between academic and real-world success;
- Helping mentees develop a set of short and long-term goals to achieve during the course of the year—academic, social, and personal;
- Designing and performing service-learning projects that will build a sense of community and fulfill needs of the school or the greater St. Mary’s County community;
- Making short videos/presentations on a variety of constructive topics;
- Going on fun field trips to educational sites to provide exposure to new ideas and learning opportunities;
- Participating in programming by Tri-County Youth Services on the topics of “Managing Emotions”, “Social Skill Development”, and/or “Leadership Development”;
- Bringing business professionals into FLOW programs to share their business and entrepreneurial experience, provide career and job readiness insight;
- Bringing college clubs and sports teams to FLOW programs for mini-workshops on college life, sportsmanship, college preparedness, etc; and,
- Bringing skilled individuals from the community into FLOW programs to share their particular skill or interest.