Goal Setting
One of the things that the Bolder Options program does that really seems to make a huge difference to these kids lives is the setting of three goals that we then strive towards. My two mentees both seem to have the drive to achieve - but have never had the opportunity to work towards something with a plan. In fact my previous mentee has said more than once that Bolder Options helped him to prioritize his activities so as to tackle the things that would make the most difference to his life.
Coming back to my new mentee - we came up with two of his goals in this week
Bolder suggests that we focus each of the goals on different areas in the youths life namely academic physical and personal
Academic: these are normally easy to come up with since it normally involves evaluting which subjects your mentee needs help with. My mentee really needs to work on his math - so we have a pretty stiff goal of getting from a No credit to a B. Its going to be tough but I believe the weekly work that we do at the library will pretty much guarantee that
Physical: these always end up being something to do with 5K times. This time around I have challenged my mentee to run for 4.5 miles in 30 mins. I think he currently is at 3 and six-tenths so this one is going to be a tough one to get to
Personal: these are the most difficult ones to figure out. We havnt gotten down to figuring this one out yet .. so I guess this gets a post on its own
The Carrot
Something that Bolder doesnt talk about is little rewards or incentives. I find that they really work well. It normally means finding out what your mentee really wants. My mentee is really interested in Japanese stuff - and the only japanese stuff I really like is Sushi. Apparently he would like to try it too - so thats our reward if we get to a B in math ....so watch for an interesting post on sushi sometime in Jan :)