Peer mentor roles

Why do we need peer mentors?

• A peer mentor can draw on his/her own recent experiences and offer guidance in a more related way
• Peer mentor relationship has the added benefit
  • Emotional support
  • Friendship
  • Personal connection

Peer mentors and TAs have to work a fine line

• If mentor plays too strong of a role "doing too much for the learner" then the students is not helped in the longer run
• If the peer mentor withholds and makes the student guess too much, the students gets frustrated/angry

Role #1: Serving as a mirror

• Avoid jumping into advice
• First, ask questions, listen, reflect back
• Then, give broader context (or process) within which the learner is situated
  • Which steps were taken
  • Which options remain (pros-cons of those)
  • What might happen next
• Example:
  • Tell me more about what you are doing
  • I hear you saying this works
  • What happened when you tried X or Y?
  • Where did you get that information?
  • Walk me through it so I can see how you are thinking about this

Role #2: Serving as a Coach (mapping/encouraging)

• Avoid saying what you would do; focus on the strategy's usefulness "many people find ..."
• Feedback: appreciation of effort is important
• Coaching helps if the person is willing to take responsibility (otherwise: "you said to do X and it did not work")
• Example:
  • Are you willing to try a new strategy?
  • One option is to ...
  • An alternative would be ...
  • I'm going to try to map where you are, and a short list of steps that might help you to move forward
  • When you tried those things, which worked for you?

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Activity: Thinking about roles

Objective:

• Reflect and learn from each other's reflections about performing the coach/mirror activity
• Connect the roles to your TA work

Instructions:
Team with your neighbors. Consider the following questions. Discuss in your team.

• What differences did you notice about the two roles?
• Did you feel like one came more naturally than the other?
• Can you make use of both in the same conversation?
• When is it better to lean towards coaching?
• When is it better to lean towards mirroring?

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References: Megas and Gigas Educate (MaGE) program at Mount Holyoke College https://sites.google.com/a/mtholyoke.edu/mage-training/home

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