Teaching Video 1: The Container
We initiate with an imaginative and practical exploration of a model for the container that safely holds a Mentoring Circle, including the following elements:
- People
- Schedule
- Location
- Intention
- Communicating with Parents
- Registration, Parent Release Forms and Legal Stuff
- Connecting Communication
- Inner Work
- Emotional Safety
Teaching Video 2: The Map of Well-being
We begin with overview of JOYW's Map of Well-being which invites you to help mentees take charge of these four facets of their well-being: physical, emotional, social, and (optionally) spiritual. Then we focus on the components of physical well-being, describing the knowledge, skills, and experiences that young people need for their physical selves to thrive.
Teaching Video 3: Rhythm
Creatively facilitate the energy and rhythm of a Mentoring Circle with:
- In and out breaths;
- The Sonata Planner tool;
- Intuitive responsiveness (a.k.a., winging it, in a good way)
Afterwards, you’re ready for Assignment 1, creating your first Sonata Planner lesson plan
Teaching Video 4: Guiding Principles and Desired Outcomes
Learn to ground your Mentoring Circle by:
- Naming your Guiding Principles (core beliefs and values you hold for mentoring)
- Describing what success looks like by identifying specific, tangible Desired Outcomes.
Teaching Video 5: Parent Circles
Gathering the parents of your mentees is a chance to educate and build community. Mentoring Circles are much more effective when parents are learning and involved. Here cover the key elements of a Parent Circles including formats, topics, and activities paths for study and inner work.
Teaching Video 6: Emotional and Social Well-Being
Learn how to teach and model, as a mentor or parent, emotional and social intelligence including:
- identifying, accepting, and expressing one’s emotions
- empathizing and responding appropriately to the feeling of others
- standing up for yourself
We also cover
- the importance of your own inner work
- core teaching messages for cultivating emotional and social well-being
- examples of Circle activities to support social-emotional learning
Teaching Video 7: Body Sovereignty + Pleasure => Sexual Well-Being
Teaching messages and activities for: Body sovereignty; consent; healthy boundaries; healthy relationships; the Super Protective Factor; positive body image; media literacy; pleasure as a guide rather than a taboo.
Teaching Video 8: Understanding and Honoring Menstruation
Teaching messages and activities for: Understanding how menstruation works; honoring menstruation; preparing a Moon Basket; celebrating menarche; Coming of Age as an adolescent Rite of Passage; charting and surfing one’s monthly hormonal cycles; alternative and conventional menstrual products; menstrual myths and taboos; cultural menstrual shame and embarrassment; positive menstrual traditions old and new.
Teaching Video 9: Puberty and Sexuality
Teaching messages and activities for the areas of comprehensive sex education not previously covered including the changes of puberty, self-pleasure, intercourse, alternatives to intercourse, birth control, STIs, and the gender spectrum
Teaching Video 10: Cultivating Intuition
Connecting with one’s intuition or inner knowing is an essential life skill that helps one make choices that are wise, safe, pleasurable, and purposeful. Learn engaging activities where you and your mentees can explore and practice the art of intuitive knowing and listening to the wisdom of one's body.
Teaching Video 11: Ceremony, Coming of Age, and Rites of Passage
We look at the role of ritual and ceremony in how you gather in circle each time as well as how you may choose to celebrate or acknowledge completion points in your overall process. You’ll learn the basic elements and how to adapt them according to your aims and your mentees’ needs.
Teaching Video 12: Charting Your Course
You will identify your core teaching messages, drawing from the Map of Well-being, your Guiding Principles, and your Desired Outcomes. Then we will pencil them into your imagined calendar of Mentoring Circles and begin to fill in the stories and activities that will support what you will be teaching.
Afterwards, undertake the second assignment to put wheels on this bus!
Teaching Video 13: The Gift
We pull together and reflect on what we’ve learned and experienced. We aim to see the Mentoring Circles process as a artful balance of Doingness and Beingness, and to recognize it as a Holistic Whole, which we’ll embellish with particular attention to:
- beginnings (including a how to create excitement in advance with a very special invitations to your upcoming mentees that will knock their socks off)
- middles (including arts & crafts and boatloads of additional activities)
- endings (which are in fact continuations, but still deserve to be honored as a turning point)
Mentoring Circle by JOYW artist Karen MacKenzie. All rights reserved.