One on One

Self-Directed

Mentoring

Online

A personalised education roadmap for a young person of any age.

Create your own learning journey.

One on one mentoring to assist you to work towards your goals.

Learners gain access to an expert in supporting and guiding self-direction through mentorship with years of experience working in self-directed learning communities on goal setting, intention-reflection and project planning programmes using tools from self-managed learning and agile learning centres.

  • Whilst I was trained by Dr Ian Cunningham on Self-Managed Learning, over my time working at The Garden in Bristol I developed and honed my own methodology with a broader bank of reflective questions aimed at teasing out a learner’s desire. However, the five broad questions still apply.

    1. Where have you come from?

    2. Where are you right now?

    3. Where are you going?

    4. How are you going to get there?

    5. How will you know when you have arrived?

    These five themes of the journey put together allow each learner to create an individual (adaptable) learning plan that will form the basis of an accountability partnership between the learner and the mentor.

  • Each week the learner and the mentor meet and discuss how the learner has progressed towards their goals.

    We reflect together on the successes that have been made as well as the challenges that have come up.

    The learner brings their week’s progress for us to review and celebrate. The mentor brings prepared questions, research, ideas, feedback to push them further towards their learning journey.

    Each meeting is a chance to go through the intention-reflection cycle that is central to agile learning. We use the learning plan as a roadmap for where the learner is going and so we end each meeting with a clear plan for what the learner wants to achieve next week and how the mentor can support them towards those goals.

    The young person leaves feeling empowered, reminded of the path of their self-direction and how they can work towards it.

  • For the rest of the week the learner works towards the goals that they set themselves for that week.

    For the mentor as much if not more of the work happens outside of the meeting, behind the scenes. To support the learner from week to week the mentor will engage in a variety of different tasks depending on what particular goals the learner is working towards that week.

    Mentors will regularly be engaging in research, writing a report, documentation, preparation, coordination, presentations, tech support, advocacy and more.

  • We are operating this mentorship programme on a sliding scale. The exact details of that are below.

We will work with your young person to create a holistic learning journey aiming to assist them in their self-direction in all aspects of their life.

We will help them uncover their desires, push them to be more agentic and feel in greater control of their self-direction.

  • Yes!

    If your learner is self-motivated and certain of their goals we will help them towards those goals. We will work with them to push them outside of their comfort zone at times, help them see how their goals fit together, and over time unearth more goals and create a broader action plan for their self-direction.

  • Over the years I have worked with many young people who have started not sure of what their goals are. The five questions central to the self-managed learning approach help to start to clarify what those goals might be.

    As a mentor I have developed tools and processes to help young people tap into their desire and create tangible goals from broad interests.

    It is part of the process to get stuck or not know how to progress at times. The main part of the learning process is learning how to move through these times, more than the tangible outputs of any projects themselves. We are developing the meta-cognitive skills required to self-direct our education and that can start at any time. The only requirement is that there is interest from the young person to engage with the process.

  • If your child is recently out of school then a period of deschooling is often neccessary. That doesn’t mean that this programme would not be for them. However, it will look different to a teenager that has been self-directed all their life.

    One one one mentoring is bespoke and catered to the individual and there is not required pace for moving through this journey. Our expectations as a mentor is grounded in the reality of where each learner is when they start. We will communicate with you as a family before starting to ascertain this and reassure you of the expected trajectory of the programme.

    Each learner’s progress is unique to them and there is no such thing as slow progress, it is the process not progress that we focus on.

  • When creating a learning plan we don’t focus just on “academic” subjects, though they will form a part of a young person’s learning journey.

    We ask questions that are more broad. We focus on interests, projects and hobbies, but also relationships, values, life goals.

    We offer thoughts and invite reflections on how the parts of someone’s journey fit together.

    For example, if you prioritise a career in music and have strong need for family then how do those fit together? What paths in a career in music will take you away from the goals of being rooted in a place near family. How much travel is required? How can you bridge these two goals which can work together or against each other.

  • Every learner is an individual and every learning plan is bespoke, so everyone’s learning journey is completely unique.

    I have helped people get G.C.S.E’s in maths, some people have worked towards learning to cook family meals, some learners have focused on building computer games, others have focused on joining a local football team to make more friends. There is no right or wrong thing to add into a learning plan and we will support people with whatever goals that they have.

How much does it cost?

We are offering mentorship to people on a sliding scale. If you are interested in this offer please reach out to us soon as there are limited spaces in some of the brackets. We offer these scales on a honesty basis, you tell us which bracket you place yourself in. If you are interested but feel that the cost is prohibitive please reach book a call with us and we would be welcome to discuss how we can work with your family in a way that is accessible to you.

I also offer reduced rates on maths tutoring if you sign up for self-directed mentorship as a twin package deal.

Book a call in to speak to us about whether one-on-one mentoring would work for you and your learner.