Invitation to Comment: advice on being a 'good Mentor'

[cantremember]

is there some resource on being a 'good Mentor' in the NodeSchool Community sense? i don't see a NodeSchool.io site page that covers this, nor a Wiki Page here, nor an open or closed Issue that really touches on this point. i could have easily missed something ...

i scanned through tips and tricks and Want to run an event? for some advice. these were relevant snippets

• tips and tricks for hosting a nodeschool event nodeschool.github.io#15 (comment)

  mentors basically hover around the room during the event and try to find people who are stuck and then they help them get un-stuck.

  "hovering" sounds good

  

• Want to run an event? discussions#93 (comment)

  (in general)

• Want to run an event? discussions#93 (comment)

  The mentors were asked to familiarize themselves with the workshops being offered in order to be the most help on-site.

  i also see mentions of "Functional JavaScript mentors," which suggests that there is some sort of idea of what Organizers are looking for

• Want to run an event? discussions#93 (comment)

  ... it's just worth giving mentors the heads up on the common pitfalls.

i'm just wanting to make sure that i'm putting my best face forward for the Community :)

[linclark]

Thanks for collecting these comments. I think it would be great to put together a page that provides tips on how to be a good mentor.

One trick that I've found really helps people...
When someone asks me what the problem is with their failing solution, even if I see the bug immediately I don't say that I do. Instead, I'll say "hmm, I'm not sure, let's take a look" and ask them to do the debugging steps that I would do if I ran into a bug that I didn't understand ("Can you put a console.log() statement and log out the foo variable", etc). This does two things: 1. It makes the learner feel less incompetent and more like we're in this together because we both don't know what's going on, and 2. it gives them the skills to find their own bugs when there aren't mentors around.

[cantremember]

thank you, @linclark . i'll be happy to author a Nodeschool Wiki page on the subject ... once i have enough material to based one on. i'll use this Issue to solicit feedback comments. it'll simply be a matter of capturing people's attention 😄

your opinion -- is this repo the proper forum for an open Issue like this, or would nodeschool/discussions be more appropriate? 'organizers' seems more long-view-oriented IMHO

[jasonrhodes]

discussions is probably a better fit but there are no rules, do whatever you think makes the most sense. The only advantage I can see to moving it to discussions is you might get more eyeballs on it naturally, but I'm not sure if that's true.

Also: don't wait on starting this page! Get it up with whatever you have, people can add to it rather than adding to this thread and making you do all the work! :)

[cantremember]

point taken. i plan to start the authoring process after i actually do my first Mentoring role later this month. until then, pile 'em on ...

[cantremember]

aaaaand ... it's already been done -- by you, @jasonrhodes

https://github.com/node-forward/mentors

👍

[linclark]

I think the Node Forward mentoring program is kind of different than the mentoring for Node School, but I might be wrong.

[cantremember]

you make a good point, @linclark . in fact, that repo doesn't yet contain the content i'd like to author

but it's an excellent starting resource, can be forked, and would be a suitable place to address similar themes about mentoring across our groups. i see no reason there wouldn't be crossover -- with @jasonrhodes permission of course

[jasonrhodes]

Oh you definitely don't need my permission, that repo isn't mine! I just work on it with some others (and I've been MIA there for a while, need to fix that).

However, @linclark is right, the node-forward mentoring program is about long-term mentoring relationships, 1:1, learning node and potentially expanding out from there. The content talked about in this thread, I thought, was more specific to how to be a good mentor at a NodeSchool event, which would be different enough in my opinion that I'm not sure even a fork makes sense there.

Does that make sense?

[cantremember]

yah. i can see that

darn it. i have to re-open the ticket

/me kicks ground

[cantremember]

• @llkats has opened mentor support sanfrancisco#68
• @maxogden & @trosetty have made progress on Event Mentor Best Practices
• i will be contributing to Mentorship Guidelines and Advice

at some point, they will all be aggregated into gloriousness