It is a new beginning… I have thought a different kind of aspects about how to be a good mentor. That is not a simple function. I have been once in my life a mentor about eight years ago. There were a project on the University of Oulu were they wanted some female mentors who can share experiences about their own studies on the Faculty of Technology and Engineering working life to the female Engineering students. It was quite short experience and maybe it wasn’t the best kind of experience: there were not so many meetings with the mentees (I had only two mentees) and we didn’t have a possibility to make a good start to mentoring process (maybe the roles and responsibilities of mentor and mentees were not clear). I think that I’m a good listener and that is a good point as a mentor. When we know the mentees, their prior knowledge and wishes to mentoring process, we can help them better and above of all we all, mentors and mentees, can learn new things. It is important that we have a different kind of functions and tasks what we do during this process and I think (and hope :-)) that we Edutool-students made a good mentoring plan so we can offer enough scaffolding. So the responsibility in the role of a mentor is huge but hopefully we can manage it!
Finally it was time to meet our mentees. Welcome Let students to this mutual mentoring trip! The first meeting was very nice and I think that we could manage to create a good, warm and playful atmosphere when we first played a game called “Market of self”. We learn new things about the mentees and their studies. I learned that it is actually possible to study Finnish in the Universities elsewhere than in Finland: how amazing :-)! We discussed about our mentoring process, what our expectations (both mentors and mentees) are and what we have planned to happen on this trip. I think that we mentors can offer a good and maybe new perspective how we can utilize these studies in the working life and I hope that the visits to our working places are interesting to our mentees. Finally we named our group to ILMALÄMPÖPUMPPU which is a Finnish word to some kind of apparatus. With this apparatus you can heat and cool your house. Maybe it was just a funny word but maybe it also describes our different roles in this mentoring process and how they both are needed so that the process is functioning well.
In this mentoring process I’m sure that I learn more and develop my skills as a learning instructor. This whole process on the other hand develops different kind of skills which are beneficial on the trip to be the Expertise!
Mari-Selinan blogi 