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Safety for All

Because the coronavirus pandemic continues to infect and sicken many, especially via the delta variant, Grand Area Mentoring suggests all volunteers wear masks while mentoring indoors in Grand County. If a classroom-level mask requirement or a broader mask mandate is in place where your mentee attends school, masks are obligatory for indoor mentoring. Grand Area Mentoring will keep you informed of developments. As the school year gets underway on August 19th, there will be a 30-day mask mandate in place at HMK Elementary School.

Please continue to monitor your symptoms and check in with your mentee about their health status. If either of you have any of the symptoms below, please cancel your session and get tested.

-Persistent cough         -Shortness of breath

-Fever over 100.4        -Sore throat

-Muscle aches/pain      -Decreased sense of smell/taste

HMK Citizenship

While mentoring occurs more evenly at all Moab campuses over time, many pairs meet each week at HMK Elementary, our largest school. HMK has a schoolwide plan to encourage positive student behaviors and attitudes. This plan includes character traits to be reinforced over the course of the academic year. They are:

  • Self-Control
  • Perseverance
  • Gratitude
  • Optimism
  • Enthusiasm
  • Curiosity
  • And Social Intelligence

You can support this existing initiative. As your mentoring relationship deepens, work the theme of citizenship into your conversations and activities. For example, you might role-model gratitude by cooperatively writing with your mentee a thank you card for a school staff member. You might help your mentee solve a problem by doing research and highlighting the fun and utility of curiosity. Or you might tell a story about when you needed to use self-control to keep yourself and others safe. Lead your mentee through a mental or practical exercise in putting these traits to use.

Additionally, classrooms can earn special awards (Great Griffins) by performing acts of responsible citizenship. Qualifying activities might include service projects at school or in the community. For example, you and your mentee might:

→ Pull weeds on the HMK campus

→ Sweep up rubber chips outside

→ Help a custodian

→ Remove scuffs from the tile floors

→ Pick up trash on the parkway

Plan an activity that your mentee would enjoy and talk to their teacher beforehand. Ask if your mentoring project could qualify for a Mini Griffin in the class’s efforts to earn a Great Griffin. Although the activity is worthwhile in itself, it might also elevate your mentee’s self-efficacy and social standing in the classroom.

 

 

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