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We recognize that you have all been teachers in order to be members of the Retired Teachers Association of Manitoba. Most of you have also been mentors without using the formal term to apply to your work to support your students. In a mentoring workshop, the presenter proposed the difference between teachers and mentors. Teachers are individuals who instruct students as to what they need to know and mentors are individuals who serve as role models and ask questions to support the student developing critical thinking skills to learn and practice new concepts.
Mentoring has been defined as “the process by which a trusted and experienced colleague (mentor) takes a professional and personal interest in the development and education of a less experienced, often younger colleague (protégé)”. This certainly defines the role you will play with your high school family member in supporting them to develop their portfolio. As a mentor, you will play a nurturing role in an ongoing caring relationship with your student.
There are three dimensions of a mentor role which most of you will unconsciously take on in our Portfolio Program, resulting from your many experiences as a teacher and leader with students. The first dimension of a mentor is Service Provider. The role of Service Provider in our program starts with your discussion with your family member to participate in this program and to sign up using the application form. You will continue in this role when you communicate with your student on an ongoing basis and provide questions and resources to assist them with their portfolio. The Support Provider is a natural role in our program. You will become the confidant for your student, the advisor and friend. One of the goals of our program is that your communication with your student will develop into a long term ongoing caring relationship which will exceed the course of their high school years as they create their portfolio. The Assistance Provider role involves you becoming a collaborator, a coach and a role model for your student. These three roles or dimensions will be a natural fit for you as the sponsor and our Committee will make efforts to continue to offer you support to fulfil them with your student.
October 27th is National Mentoring Day. National Mentoring Day aims to educate, inspire, connect and support mentoring to effect positive change and elevate mentoring throughout the world. We hope you will contact a family member who is a high school student and start the mentoring process. This is a “win-win” process for all involved and we believe your student will be so thankful for the mentoring support you offer. The true value will be most appreciated when your student has at their fingertips all the artifacts of their high school journey found in their portfolio. These will provide the information the student needs to develop grant and bursary applications, to write cover letters for jobs and to support their university applications to ensure they are enrolled in a post-secondary institution upon graduation!
Sign up today! Our Committee is onboard assisting you and your student in this program. A portfolio will be sent to your student with inserts providing guidance to get started. You will be sent “Monthly Discussion Starters” each month to assist you in your mentor role. We are here to mentor you through our ongoing website information and upcoming KIT articles! We hope to hear about your mentoring successes, challenges and suggestions in our upcoming research project being introduced this month by our researcher, Andrew Augustyn. If you are enrolled, watch for his letter of invitation to participate in this exciting research activity!
For those of you who have not yet completed an application to enroll your family member into the Student Success Portfolio Project, below are some reasons to participate in this “win-win” program. There are benefits for everyone involved!
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RTAM MEMBER BENEFITS |
STUDENT BENEFITS |
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1. The project will provide the means and incentive to increase communication between RTAM members and their family high school students they are sponsoring. |
1 Portfolios encourage the collection of artifacts and evidence by the student to support their successful writing of award and scholarships applications. |
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2. Recognizing the importance of a post-secondary education, RTAM members can feel pride in the role they will play in supporting their family members to be awarded funding to help with the high costs of today’s world. |
2 Portfolios help students focus on their knowledge, skills and attitudes to support their successful applications for bursaries and scholarship. |
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3. This project will provide RTAM members with an opportunity to experience renewed passion in their roles as teacher and mentor working with their family members. |
3 Portfolios help students track their changes and growth in important leadership skills through their high school experience. |
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4. RTAM member involvement with their family members will promote positive mental health opportunities during a time when COVID has caused many to experience social and physical isolation. |
4 Portfolios assist the student in becoming more aware of their own learning experiences and history. |
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5. RTAM member involvement will support a sense of purpose in their lives and offer them a sense of social value to society. |
5 Portfolios provide a framework to encourage students’ self-assessment leading to a more accurate choice of how they want to spend their future, their career aspirations. |
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6. RTAM members will increase their opportunities to know and understand their youth family members’ challenges and issues while developing a relationship and creating a sense of trust. |
6 Portfolios provide a framework with resources for building a resume and completing university/college entrance applications as well as job applications. |
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7. RTAM members can offer direct input into the writing of the applications to enhance the students’ chances of being successful. |
7 Portfolios save the student the time and agony of trying to recall their experiences and gather all their information to complete applications in their graduating year. |
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8 Portfolios provide students support to practice informed decision-making regarding their personal and professional opportunity selections. |
As you can see by reading this, there are benefits for both of these intergenerational groups, promoting a “Win-Win” situation for all involved!
In the upcoming months, we will be posting “Monthly Discussion Starters” on the website as well as placing some in our KIT magazines. These are simply suggested questions you can use with your student relative to spark some discussion about their portfolios. You may have other conversations which arise spontaneously once you are talking and that is great! Each conversation will be different because of your unique relationship with your student relative. These “Monthly Discussion Starters” are suggestions to get those conversations started and support your student relative to build a meaningful comprehensive portfolio.
For one of your first discussion starters with your student relative, you may want to talk about how they will use the 13 sections within their portfolio. They do not have to use all of them but may want to select to put labels on some of them to help sort their entries as they collect them. Here are some ideas for 5 questions you could ask which will initiate this conversation.
By having these ideas planted in their minds as they start their collection, it will help them to find their entries and sort them as they build their portfolio.
Last September, the members of the Student Award Committee decided to explore the “New Horizons for Seniors” grant opportunities and found it was a great match for our desire to explore using portfolios with students sponsored by RTAM members. When we reviewed their Program Objectives and National Priorities, we found an alignment which was conducive to our Project goals. We selected to apply for a $5,000 grant as we believed that this would give us the start-up funding to get our project off the ground.
Below is our response to the application question #25, explaining how we will meet their Program Objectives and National Priorities. It will be obvious how this was the ideal grant for us to seek for funds.
“In terms of the Program Objectives, RTAM is a non-profit organization of 10,159 retired teachers and all aspects of this project, as with all RTAM initiatives, will be run on a volunteer basis by seniors. Our Student Success Portfolio project has been planned, and will be implemented, totally by senior women volunteers. While the project development and delivery has been developed by the Student Awards Committee, the success of the project will be promoted and delivered by volunteer seniors across the province.
The social participation of seniors will be fostered across the province, including Northern Manitoba, through various public relation channels. We have 18 local Chapters and 3 out-of-province Chapters (Alberta and British Columbia) who will be offered opportunities to regularly communicate with their members about this project. We have a provincial quarterly magazine called “Keeping in Touch” (KIT) which is designed, written and published by seniors and mailed to all members. As well, we host a website for our members to access and learn more about this project. These will all be used to generate interest and participation in our project.
Because our membership is comprised totally of former teachers, mentoring a family member and teaching them about the importance of this portfolio will be a natural fit for many. They may find themselves asking their student questions in casual conversations throughout the school year such as “Have you put any new artifacts into your portfolio?” “What have you been doing?” “What can you put in your portfolio to serve as a reminder at graduation time when you are applying for scholarships of this activity/passion/leadership opportunity in which you have been involved?” “Did you know you can consider placing … into your portfolio?” offering interesting suggestions. The seniors will serve a mentoring role in the project.
With social participation as a program objective, our project offers our RTAM members social participation with their high school grandchildren and/or nieces or nephews. With COVID implications, our project involves seniors using various means of communication (letters, cards, phone calls, Facetime, email, Skype and other forms of visual online communication) within their home setting when it is not possible or safe to hold face-to-face visits. Being involved in these forms of communications offers the seniors a reason to communicate with their family sponsor above and beyond only signing off on their application forms.
In terms of National Priorities, healthy aging will be supported through the various senior connections with their youth applicants. Through the communication and engagement with the family members, we believe this project will address some members’ feelings of loneliness and social isolation. It will boost their mental health by offering a purpose in their lives to enhance their sponsored applicants’ success in collecting and reflecting upon their portfolio artifacts. Student will have someone they can trust and work with as a team to create their applications with success.
Thus, our RTAM Student Success Portfolios project supports both the New Horizons Program Objectives and National Priorities.”
RTAM was awarded the $5,000 grant in early March, 2021. Since then, we have used our funds to purchase the portfolios, to cover the mailing of the portfolios out to students, for the design of our logo and for the French translation of student materials. Part of our funding has been allocated for a research project which we will hopefully be undertaking with some University of Manitoba Masters students in their fall Qualitative Research Course. The study will help us to determine what has been working successfully, what are some challenges faced by our RTAM members and their student relatives and what we can do to improve the project in the upcoming years. More will be shared once we have found our students and work together collaboratively to determine the design of the research project.
School-Related Activities
School Activities offer students opportunities to develop many leadership and teamwork skills. Below are some questions to start the discussion with your student about their school-related activity artifacts to be placed in their portfolios.
As part of our New Horizon for Seniors Grant, we allocated some funds for a research study to help us determine the effectiveness of our program. We recently were matched with a U of M Masters student to be our researcher. Andrew Augustyn is very excited to do this research as he is interested in the theme of mentoring for his M.Ed. thesis. RTAM has sent out letters of invitation to hold interviews on his behalf to those who have signed up for the program. He will be doing two interviews this fall as part of his Qualitative Research Course and then completing our research with eight more interviews in February in order to meet our Grant Report requirements due in March. Enjoy reading his biography below.
As a first generation Canadian growing up in the inner city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, I was not only learning how to speak English, but at a young age, realizing the importance of relationship building. This has become a staple in my successful experiences as a multi-sport athlete, such as when I represented Team Canada at the World Martial Arts Games in Killarney Ireland where I received a Silver medal for our country. These experiences empowered me as a coach and teacher. My late Babcia inspired me with her mentorship, moments of learning with someone special, while enjoying a traditional Sunday with chicken soup.
While completing my Bachelor in Education and my Bachelor in Kinesiology through the integrated Education program at University of Winnipeg, I began applying my skills and knowledge to programming with the City of Winnipeg. I administered community drop in centers and facilitated summer camps. From these experiences, I transitioned to ultimately supporting the Career Education Program with Frontier School Division, mentoring students through recreation, career involvement and relationship building within Northern Communities.
My teaching experiences in both rural Manitoba and Winnipeg have inspired me to shape my understanding of inclusion and led me to gain a further understanding in career development, inclusiveness, psychology of human relationships, and universal design for learning as I graduate with a Post Baccalaureate Diploma in Education from the University of Manitoba.
More recently, I have been a teacher for ten years, the last six of which have been at Gordon Bell High School. I currently teach a diverse portfolio of Grade 7-12 Physical/Health Education for students in such programs as English as an Additional Language, Special Education, the Learning Assistance Centre, the Adapted Skills Program and the Centre for Adapted Programming. I have continued to teach courses in Land-Based Learning and coach multiple sport teams over the years. As a graduate student pursuing a M. Ed in School Administration, I am an advocate for mentorship, servant leadership, and community building through collaboration. I will be completing a thesis in the near future incorporating these dimensions of human interactions among people in our ever changing world.
Educationally,
Andrew Augustyn
We continue to add articles to the RTAM website including our “October Discussion Starter” and “Mentoring”. We are starting to plan with Gordon the development of two You Tube videos about our Program. We had our first request for a Student Portfolio in French! We have our researcher in place, Andrew Augustyn, a U of M Masters student. He is very excited to do our research as he is exploring the topic of Mentoring for his Master’s Thesis. We had our first invitation for a Committee member to speak on our Program at an RTAM Chapter meeting!
Reference Letters
When it is time to apply for Scholarships, Bursaries and/or Awards, it is almost guaranteed that you will need a reference letter as part of the application process. Getting a letter of reference can feel like a challenge, especially if you do not know who you should ask to supply this important document.
Typically, a reference letter provides the Award Committee(s) with valuable insight regarding your qualities, character, and accomplishments. Whether your reference knows you well or not, it is a good idea to assist this person with a document where you reflect on your strengths, goals, skills, and significant experiences.
The best reference letters come from people who have worked closely with you and who understand the goals of the award for which you are applying. Some examples of people you may consider for your reference letter(s) are teachers, former or current employers, clergy members, coaches, school counsellors/advisers, and leaders of an organization with which you are associated. Your reference(s) can greatly influence your chances of receiving an Award, so make sure you select the best person to represent you based on the Award’s criteria.
Whenever someone writes a reference letter for you it should be viewed as a favor that is deserving of appreciation. In the end, the person may be responsible for you receiving an Award, so giving thanks is the polite thing to do.
Community Involvement
By becoming involved in community activities, students learn many important social skills while developing understanding of leadership and teamwork responsibilities. Community activities include both volunteer and paid employment opportunities. They can involve helping in a one day program as a participant or in a yearly club or organization as a leader. The opportunities can be planned to support a cause, offer peer tutoring to others, teach a specific skill or program and a multitude of other varied activities of interest to your student.
Below are some questions to start the discussion with your student about the role they are playing in their local community and the artifacts they may want to choose to place within their portfolios.
1. Create a list of all the different community activities that you have been involved in with a brief description of your role in the activity.
2. How long have you been involved in the particular activities?
3. What did you enjoy most about your participation in the activity?
4. How did your participation in that activity help you in other areas of your life?
5. Do you have any mementos of your participation that you found to include in your portfolio? For example, certificates, pictures, letters, newspaper clippings, etc. will all serve as reminders of the activity when completing scholarship or bursary applications.
We continue to add articles to the RTAM website including our “October Discussion Starter” and “Mentoring”. We are starting to plan with Gordon the development of two You Tube videos about our Program. We have redesigned our website to make it more reader friendly and helpful to our sponsors.
We have a researcher in place, Andrew Augustyn, a U of M Masters student. He is very excited to do our research as he is exploring the topic of Mentoring for his Master’s Thesis. Andrew Augustyn is seeking one sponsor and their student relative to participate in our research. Be the first to apply!
We had our first invitation for a Committee member to speak on our Program at an RTAM Chapter meeting!
We continue to seek applications from RTAM members who wish to support their family member in the development of a portfolio. We decided to open up the eligibility criteria to include students in Grades 9 and 10 as reflected in our revised application found online. Portfolios are now available in French.
Funding Application Forms:
Awards, Scholarships and Bursaries
Filling out application forms to access funding for your educational costs can be very frustrating and confusing. Dealing with different application forms makes the process even more difficult. Below are several tips to help you make this process go smoothly.
Winning scholarships for post-secondary schooling can be a huge game changer in your financial situation, but first you have to win them! Following this advice will help make your application stand out and win more awards.
Questions to Consider:
Where do I find information on Bursaries, Scholarships and Awards?
Check out these sites:
1. RTAM website for the RTAM Student Award : www.rtam.mb.ca
2. UCN RTAM Bursary: www.ucn/awards
3. Johnson Scholarship Program: scholarshipsfund@johnson.ca
4. Manitoba information: www.manitobascholarships.ca
5. Canadian information: www.scholarshipscanada.com
