Gentoo

I'm participating in the Google Summer of Code this summer ... not as a student (crikey, it's been 12 years now since I graduated from the University of Sheffield - where does the time go?) but as a mentor. It's my honour to be a mentor to Anant Narayanan, the most in-demand student involved in this year's Summer of Code (as reported by Gentoo Weekly News).

No pressure, eh?

I thought it would be useful to share some thoughts about being a mentor. I haven't seen a lot of discussion about mentoring within SoC; hopefully this'll spark some off.

Mentors have an interesting position of responsibility. On the one hand, we're responsible for the SoC student(s) who we're looking after. On the other, we're also responsible for ensuring that our organisation (Gentoo in my case) get the most out of the student's work. Or, as they say in US armed forces officer training, nothing is as important as the man, and nothing is as important as the mission.

First and foremost, whether it's SoC, Gentoo's Social Workspaces, the workplace, the dojo, or whatever, it's a student that "does", not the mentor. Nobody ever learns anything if they feel that they cannot "do". It's essential for the student to feel that they have permission to "do". As children (and for some of us, this carries on through adult life too), we learn by play, by "wouldn't it be fun if ...".

Secondly, students need appropriate feedback. No-one can learn without feedback. Students who are participating in the SoC in particular have the expectation of great feedback from their mentor. But what is appropriate feedback? It's closely tied in with what I feel is the third most important aspect of mentoring.

If you look at requests for feedback from students, it nearly always comes in the form of a question. A student will stop what they are doing, and ask "How was that?" Or maybe they'll stop what they are doing, and ask "Why is it done that way?" Or maybe they'll stop what they are doing, and ask "What if I did it that way instead?" Overwhelmingly, the two common denominators are that they ask a question, and that the question is stopping them from "doing".

My third point about mentoring is that students always have a question that they want answered, but that they haven't asked. Sometimes, it's on the tip of their tongue, but they need an answer to their first question before they feel safe to ask it. Sometimes, it's the question at the back of their mind that's actually prompted the question that they have asked. Being able to identify what the "unspoken question" is, and to answer it for the student, is a great skill for a mentor to develop. In my experience, it's the secret to making a student feel like they're the only person in the room, and that they have you complete attention.

But how should you answer a question? Here, I want to introduce another tool for mentors, which I call the Frame of Reference. The Frame of Reference is what links a mentor's description with a student's understanding. Think of it as a situation that both mentor and student have the same understanding of. If you have a shared understanding, you're able to explore it together, because both mentor and student really are talking about the same thing. Without that shared understanding, mentor and student are actually talking at cross-purposes; at best the student only gets a bit of understanding, and the bits that he gets will be by accident. That's not good mentoring!

In order to answer a question, the mentor has to find a common frame of reference with the student. This is a trial and error process. My own teacher, Robert Earl Taylor, is always telling me that the secret is to keep trying to find a completely different way to explain something. For any given topic, many mentors only have the one way for explaining something. If the student doesn't "get it", the mentor will go back over the same thing the same way time and time again until either it sinks in or the student switches off. Which do you think comes first? It's normally that the student switches off

Providing feedback, and answering questions, leads me nicely to the last point that I feel is important. You have to allow your students to fail if they are to learn. You can't wrap them up in cotton wool and ensure that everything they do is safe and sanitised. As a mentor, or a leader in business, failure-avoidance is a worthy principle, but it's too often applied through micro-management.

Part of the fun - part of the permission that students need if they are to "do" - is to make decisions for themselves, and to give new things a go. If you get the balance wrong, and take all that away from them, then what's left is the student trying to be a parrot, and trying to copy whatever it is he thinks you want.

And when that happens, the student's results will merely reflect the very worst of your own opinions, instead of the very best of the student's own capabilities.