Suki Steinhauser of CIS and Sari Waxler of Seedling Foundation
The Seedling Foundation believes that education and support changes the mentoring paradigm.
From the beginning of the program, we have offered Seedling’s Promise Mentor University to our Mentors. Mentor University includes orientation, training, role-playing, Mentor Minute informational newsletters, continuing support from our Mentor Directors and regular support luncheons throughout the year.
In addition, once a year we gather together with hundreds of Mentors in the Austin area and offer a half day of workshops and training that we call the Saturday Academy. For the last two years, Communities in Schools, Central Texas, has joined us in this activity and many Mentors have benefited.
The workshops are comprehensive in scope and the topics are chosen by Mentors through an online survey. Seedling’s gratitude goes out to the 88 mentors who completed the interest survey to let us know their topics of high interest. Thanks to their valuable input, January 21, 2012 participants can look forward to presentations on Self-Esteem, Difficult Conversations, Positive Youth Development, the Non-Talkative Mentee, Drop-out Prevention, Personality Types, Bullying, Antisocial Behaviors, Healthy Relationships, Middle-school Mentoring, Using Literature, Children of Trauma, and Future Matters.
Our web site will feature some of the hand outs from these workshops for future reference, and it is our hope that the Mentors of Seedling’s Promise and Communities in Schools spend a wonderful, informative morning together.
-Sari Waxler, Executive Director
