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Mentorship

By Trial and Error

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Monica Raj

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Overview

Sparks - Girls aged 5 + 6
YWCA High School Mentorship Program - grade 11 & 12
VSB High School Work Experience Program - grade 11 & 12
UBC Trimentorship Program - Computer Science undergrads

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Sparks

In 2nd year university I decided to volunteer as a Girl Guide Leader.
Girl Guides is a similar organization to Scouts or Girl Scouts, if you’re more familiar with those.
I joined a group of Sparks. Sparks is the division of Girl Guides for 5-6 yr girls
I was a Sparks leader for 8 years from 2004-2012

Sparks

Kindergarten and grade 1 girls

We met once a week in the basement of my old elementary school

10-15 girls

2-3 leaders

Meetings had a set format

As the kids trickled in we had coloring books

Once everyone got there, we did our opening song - it had actions and jumping

Then we did a sharing circle. We passed a talking stick (a spatula with a face and wig) around and each girl would tell us something about her past week - what happened at school, birthday parties, maybe a lost tooth. (Tooth fairy inflation is shocking)

We then had a physical game to burn off energy and moved on to the main activity for the evening - usually crafts

At the end we sang a closing song and everyone went home

Since I was a Science student when I started this, the obvious ask was for me come up with the science activities.

I learnt 2 big lessons through these Science activities

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Sparks - Lesson 1

Burning candles and removing oxygen source
Separating out component inks in markers using filter paper and water
Mixing oil, water and dye to make lava lamps

Guessing game
Sink or Float
Bridge Building
DIY Feelings Chart

A lot of the activities I found by googling fun science activities for kindergarteners fell a little flat. Glazed eyes, less engagement and less enthusiasm - than the games and crafts.

What I noticed was that activities where the kids were fed information or where they were being herded towards a single, specific conclusion didn’t work.

What worked 100x better were activities that were open ended, activities that encouraged them to come up with their own thoughts, encouraged them to observe and gave them words for things they observed.

My favorite games were:

Guessing Game:

A set of items in the room
1 girl taken out of the room.
Leader picks one item out of the set
Girls get to observe the item

Shape, color, size, taste, texture

Girl comes backs in and must guess the item based on recorded observations

Items:

Many different bottles of water, each mixed with something Eg: sugar, salt, lemon juice, almond extract, corn starch (thick & slimy),
Fabrics of different textures
Cans of different sizes

This is surprisingly difficult because they dont yet have the words to describe tastes and textures with too much precision. But they come up with some pretty neat work arounds. Kids thoughts are amazingly lateral

The DIY Feelings Chart that struck a cord with me when I saw how people reacted to it. Like the chart above but blank. Each person decided what feelings they wanted to add and drew their own picture for it

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Sparks - Lesson 2

Relays are AMAZING!!

Loops
Sorting
Conditionals

Human Robot

I read an article in the Vancouver Sun that had a big effect on the activities I organized.
It was part of an article series on Math and Math skills. The article mentioned that one reason people struggle math is that they get lost in the mechanics of algebra and pushing numbers around and cannot ground the number shuffling in a conceptual understanding.
The article also described activities for toddlers to build conceptual math skills. Eg: comparisons - which chair is bigger, fewer and more

I felt this disconnect between the concept and mechanics could easily apply programming
Before we get lost in the syntax of any programming language, before we even get to pictoral, drag and drop programming languages for kids, it would be good to get a solid, conceptual, instinctive understanding of programming constructs. So riffing off the which chair is bigger thing for toddlers I came up with some games that were a regular part of the ‘physical game’ part of the meeting

Relays are natural loops and can be used for tonnes of covertly computer sciencey games
Sorting relay - two teams sort cans by size. Each person can only move one can at a time. Easy version, they take a can out of a box and insert it into the can array in the correct place to maintain sort order
Condiditionals - mystery items in box in middle of the room. Girls run to box one by one. Based on color of the item the retrieve, they run to one corner of the room and drop of item there before returning to the. I used empty cans with stickers on them.
Human robot.

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YWCA High School Mentorship Program

Matched with one grade 11 or 12 student (16-18 yrs) who is interested in your profession
Meet once every 1-3 months over the course of 1 school year

I did this program for 3 or 4 years
I encountered 2 very opposite types of students while I was doing this

1 high achieving students who had their whole life figured out and were all set to execute on that plan

In this case, mostly I just met them and chatted. We talked about books, movies, food. I picked their brains about what post-secondary plans they had and how they made that choice, what the application process was like. It was a nice for me to get window into the current high school world.

Very flakey students. Lots of chasing required. Initiate meetings, follow-up and confirm and remind and be prepared to be stood up multiple times. I dont think I contributed much because I often barely had a chance to meet them.

I think this is still a worthwhile mentorship.
I suspect the mentorship was the first time those students engaged in any sort of professional interaction.
I hope this program was a good practise run. Even if they failed to show up. Failure is educational and this is safe place to fail with no serious consequences.

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Vancouver School Board High School Work Experience

A grade 11-12 student (16-18 yrs) who is interested in your field is placed with your company
Instead of school they come to work everyday for a full work day for 1-2 weeks.
This is an unpaid placement
VSB provides WCB coverage for the student while they are on site
NDA can be signed by the student if needed

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Sample Work Experience SCHEDULE

1 Main Coding Project

Ideally should have well documented step by step instructions
Ideally divided into many parts that iteratively add functionality

Demos how breaking down and tackle a big project
Easy to change scope to match student aptitude and interest

Online courses are too theory heavy. A project with instructions is better
Usually not part of company source code

Daily check-ins

beginning and/or end of day. Gauge progress and fine tune project as needed

Most valuable activity of all!

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Speed Mentoring ACTIVITY

Goals

See many different roles and jobs
See the diversity of skills required in different positions
See how many different educational backgrounds there are
Get a feel of how a career might progress over 3, 5, 10, 20 years
See how many people have made major career transitions
See the business side of software

Format

1:1 sessions 15-30 min each
Round table with all participants

Who

Co-op Students
New graduate hires
Devs & QA
People Managers
Product Managers
Project Managers
Sales & Marketing
HR & Recruiters
Executives, Finance

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Speed Mentoring - TopicS

Everyone

What is your role?
What is your educational and work background?
How did you come to be doing the work you are doing now?
What is the most enjoyable thing about your job?
What is the most challenging thing about your job?
How do you keep your skills up-to-date in this industry?
What is the value of different educational credentials: Diplomas, Bachelor’s Degree, Masters Degrees, MBA, PhD.
Does the brand of the university matter (Ivy league vs lesser known)?

Co-op Students or New Grads

University applications
College vs university vs trade school
Selecting a major
Co-op program benefits, experiences

HR / Recruiters

What do you look for when hiring?
Resume coaching
How to look for jobs
Interview skills
Do I need to do personal projects outside of school or work?

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Work Experience: Logistics & Tips

On getting buy-in from your company

Mitigate cost of hosting a student

Communicate: give your team a run down of the program ahead of time.

Go to every standup, send a wide email

Finding a project takes time. Set expectations with the teacher.
Spread the word, spread the positive feedback so this program has a good rep

The number 1 resistance to participating in this program is the productivity cost to the hosting company.

Some managers have been 100% committed to taking this on since day 1.
Most are concerned with losing productivity.
This is a valid concern and is the biggest cost of participating in this programs.
So first I’ll talk about how to mitigate this cost, then I’ll come back to some of the other challenges I’ve faced.

Cost mitigation strategies

Bang on the drum. Tell everyone what’s going on. Get approval from the core people who need to approve it, but be sure to inform and get buy in from everyone else like HR, office managers, any community liasons, senior team members etc. People react badly if they feel stuff is happening without their input.

Comment on what has not gone well in the past

Company too small
Company weeks from bankruptcy
The program has a bad rep amongst students and teachers

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UBC Trimentorship - Computer science Dept

Computer Science Department Tri-mentorship Program
Double decker mentorship - a 1st or 2nd year CS student with a senior CS student and a industry mentor
Meet a minimum of once per semester over the course of 1 year
Can meet with any subset of the mentorship trio
Meeting options:

Coffee and chat
Mock interviews
Office tour
Invite to speed mentorship
Go to a meetup together
Collaborate on a pet project

UBC Tri-mentorship

Anyone here ever participated in this? - you guys are familiar with the setup
This program is offered by several different faculties at UBC.
I’ve been involved with the program offered by the Computer Science dept
Each year, program participants are matched into groups of 3. One junior student is mentored by a senior student and the senior student is mentored by a industry or faculty member.
The trio can decide how they want to meet. They can meet in 2s just with their direct mentor or mentee. All 3 can meet together.
I’ve participated in this program in all 3 rungs - junior student, senior student and now as industry mentor.
As the top tier mentor I personally like to meet both students in the trio. Either as a group of 3 or if I feel their interests are divergent or one student is taking up more of the conversation than the other, then I like to meet each person individually.
Most common meeting format is a coffee and chat
But in addition to that, I’ve done mock interviews, we’ve gone to meetups together, I always do a quick office tour. I’ve invited trimentorship students to my speed mentorship sessions and from the feedback I’ve received, they’ve been incredibly well received. As valuable for university students as high school students.

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IN BETWEEN THE LINES OF QUESTIONS

Pet projects

- How important are they? How do I pick? I dont already have one - should I quit my program?

How do I pick a masters topic?
What courses do I need to take to get a job?

There are a couple of questions I get repeatedly from university students and I’d like to share those with you.

Pet projects

How important are they? How do I pick? I don’t already do this - should I quit my program?
This topic is very important to me because it’s a huge source of anxiety and lack of confidence.
Students will say to me “I hear these other guys in my department talking about all their side programming projects and I don’t do that type of thing so I don’t think that I should be a programmer.” I hear this a lot from females and but I’ve heard this from male mentees as well. I’ve also had at least one mentee (male) decide not to pursue a programming career because they didnt feel like they fit into that mould of hard core 24x7 coders that write genius hacker projects on their own.
This is a pretty dangerous, exclusionary stereotype.
The other reason this expectation concerns me is that university students usually have a pretty rigourous load already. And the mentality that you should be work even more, especially the same type of work in your downtime is dangerous.
So when we discuss pet projects, I like to balance sharing and discussing fun, inspirational projects while also emphasizing that they are not obligatory. Life won’t end if you dont code 24x7. Downtime to decompress your brain is very important. Grounding your life in a variety of activities in very valuable.

Masters topics

This is trick question. Usually when I ask follow up questions to learn what their interests and goals are I find out that they believe that they will not get a decent job or progress in their career without a masters degree.

What courses should I pick?

Again there is usually an tricky underlying sentiment here. There are courses that can be very interesting and useful. There is a feeling that there is one correct, optimal course combo and that they will fail at life if they dont nail that. There is sometimes a lot of anxiety that they have picked sub-optimal courses or they pine after that one advanced algorithms course that didn’t fit their schedule.

You can see how seeing the life, education and career trajectories of a wide range of people through speed mentorship activity can help alleviate a lot of these concerns by giving them a broader perspective.

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Links

https://www.girlguides.ca/web/
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/mathmatters/entire-series.html ( I think this was the series, but I’m not sure)
https://ywcavan.org/programs/mentorship/high-school-mentorship
http://go.vsb.bc.ca/schools/careerprograms/employers/Pages/WORK%20EXPERIENCE.aspx
https://www.cs.ubc.ca/students/undergrad/careers/tri-mentoring-program

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Since my work experience with you, I've had a much clearer idea of what my future might look like, and how to achieve that. I learned so much about not only coding and computer science, but the world of software development and the people in that world. I hope other students can get opportunities like this one, it really was so memorable and helpful.

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FIN

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Full Stack

Product

Engineers

Data Engineers

Infrastructure

Engineers

NLP and

Deep Learning

Engineers

dialpad.com/jobs

Talk	UberConference	Support	Sell
IP Telephony & Messaging	Video & Web Conferencing	Call Center	Sales Dialer & Engagement

Confidential – Dialpad, Inc. ™

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DISCARDS

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Outline: remove this slide from final deck

Go through each of the 4 programs: �Sparks, YWCA High School Mentorship Program, UBC Trimentorship, VSB High School Work Experience Program

Age group
Format of program
Typical meeting activities
What didnt work and why
What did work and why
What are the typical questions I get over and over from that group
What did I learn/gain from being a mentor in this program?

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Sparks

Girls aged 5 and 6 (kindergarten and grade 1)
Meetings once a week - 1.5 hours

10-15 girls
2 female leaders, 1 female junior leader (aged 15-17)

Typical meeting format

Gathering activity: coloring or story time
Opening song
Sharing circle
Physical game Eg: tag, museum
Main activity: Usually craft based
Closing song