ReachOut: Mentoring Scheme
ReachOut is a mentoring charity, working with schools in Manchester, London, and Liverpool, enabling disadvantaged students to reach their potential. It is essentially an after school club consisting of an hour of work followed by an hour of sports.
My role when volunteering for ReachOut was to be a mentor for a young person. It is an after school club that runs for 20 weeks helping children develop the four character strengths that ReachOut focuses on:
- Fairness: treating everyone equally
- Self Control:
- Good Judgement:
- Staying Power:
The character strengths are a big part of the project, students are taught the character strengths during the first session, and activities throughout the project help consolidate their understanding and allows them to apply these to their behaviour. Mentors are encouraged to use character language and encourage mentees to use character strengths. Each session ends with a reflection where mentees reflect on the character strengths they have used in the session, and ones they could improve on.
The importance of a growth mindset is also an important part of the sessions. The students learn the importance of having a growth mindset, learning from mistakes and not giving up and rather than a fixed mindset.
How to get involved
You can get involved with ReachOut by filling in a small form of basic details. Following this, an email is sent prompting you to sign up for a training session. All that is required is three types of ID and the attendance at the training session. Following the training session, you are then prompted to complete online safeguarding training.
The training session was three hours and involved a range of group activities, based on the role of a mentor.
The Role
The mentoring role involved being part of a project that ran once a week for two hours, like an after school club. I was assigned to work with the same student each week in year 5, known by ReachOut as a mentee. Each student was given a place at ReachOut for different reasons, such as to increase their confidence or improve their behaviour.
Session Plan
- Each session began with a lesson overview by the project leader, who leads the sessions.
- We would then complete a starter activity like a riddle, easing mentees into the session.
- Academic work would then be completed for around 40 minutes, either a Maths or English worksheet.
- We would finish with a sports session playing games such as dodgeball or football.
The project runs from October to April, lasting a total of 40 hours.
For more information about ReachOut and the work they do, visit their website.
