Hope To Happiness

AFSE Update - Mentoring and Rec Room

Lots of progress has been made with the Academy for Software Engineering (http://afsenyc.org) since the last post. Generous donations have been made of time, items and resources that have made the rec room fully stocked for the students. A full update on this will be coming soon.

We are also working on the mentorship program for the students as well. It is a program that gives each student a personal mentor for 2 hours in person in NYC a month (rest is over email). The program is run through iMentor, which has provided support for evaluating, sourcing, and organzing the program.

If you’d like to be a mentor (preferably people in the technology field) check out the information below and apply by Monday, October 15th.

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The Academy for Software Engineering (AFSE), a new public high school in New York City, is finishing a mentorship drive to match our 9th grade students with professional mentors from the technology industry.  We are using a program called iMentor to manage the mentor-student relationship and provide a curriculum for students and mentors to engage with focused around high school graduation, college admission, and career.  Anyone interested in becoming a mentor can read more about the program on the iMentor website: www.imentor.org, and sign up on the Become a Mentor page in the website (make sure to mention AFSE in the notes section so that you get matched up with the school).

The iMentor program asks for a minimal commitment from mentors including a one-time training session (2.5 hours) during the month of October or early November (a variety of dates are available), a weekly email response to an email that your mentee will send, and a once a month 2 hour meeting with the mentor at the school (40 Irving Place).  The weekly email is composed by the student as a part of a class during the school day and centers around a curriculum prompt provided by the iMentor program.  The school also has an assigned, full time staff member who is available to you for questions at any time - this staff member can help provide you with references to answer student questions, or give advice regarding student communication you may have questions about.  The email is exchanged through the iMentor system and students do not have the expectation of privacy in communication with their mentors.

If you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact Leigh Ann DeLyser, CS Curriculum Consultant at AFSE, ladelyser@afsenyc.org, Primo Lasana, plasana@afsenyc.org, AFSE iMentor Representative, or Larry Mahl iMentor Volunteer Coordinator lmahl@imentor.org for more information.

Thank you for supporting the next generation of Computer Scientists and Software Engineers!