4 December 2024
Growth Mentoring
31 October 2022
Senior School
Growth Mentoring at Macquarie is a value-add point of difference sequential program provided to students (and their parents) in Years 10 to 12.
The ultimate aim of the program is that students should thrive, not just survive as senior students at Macquarie. The Growth Mentoring program is a collaborative and empowering process and provides a framework for success. Built on the premise of a growth mindset, the program is both empowering and collaborative, reflective of personal organisational and learning practice, aspirational in purpose and with key aims to build capacity and personal confidence.
Macquarie’s Growth Mentoring consultant, Mr David Gates, is a parent of six successful children and a former principal and teacher with vast experience and wisdom around working with teenagers and their parents as they navigate the highs and lows of high school.
In Term 4, Mr Gates met individually with students commencing Year 12, to listen to them, and to hear how well or not they have started their HSC courses. Conversations included discussions around students adding or dropping a course and ensuring that these decisions had been well considered. Students were asked to set long and short term goals including academic and personal goals, describe their hopes and aspirations for the future, and outline their greatest challenges in achieving them.
With trusted relationships already established through Growth Mentoring sessions in Year 11, our students understood the purpose of the meetings and were confident to discuss their plans openly with Mr Gates.
Throughout 2023, Year 12 students will meet each term with Mr Gates as he monitors and tracks their progress, and helps them to arrive at good decisions regarding their learning and plans for the future.
In Year 10, the focus of the Growth Mentoring sessions is to work through the very important process of considering options post Year 10 and selecting subjects for Years 11 and 12. Parents are strongly encouraged to join these sessions to ensure that students have engaged with parents, staff and other significant adults in making wise decisions with personal and career goals and aspirations as paramount.