Giving Compass' Take:

• Getting Smart discusses the ways that mentors can develop high quality project-based learning, helping students in areas such as collaboration, management and reflection.

• Are there ways for nonprofits to train or match mentors with students in this area? How can educators create an open environment for such relationships?

• For more on building a framework for project-based learning, click here.

Extended community-connected projects offer at least seven benefits to students:

  1. Big multistep projects teach the practical skills of project management.
  2. Challenging projects build the habits of persistence (sometimes called grit) and self-direction.
  3. If they include some degree of voice and choice, projects build ownership and motivation (with self-direction, these dispositions are often called agency).
  4. Integrated challenges teach critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Problems with no easy answer build design skills.
  5. Team projects develop social awareness and collaboration skills.
  6. Projects often conclude with written and oral reports that build communication skills across the disciplines (e.g. writing about science).
  7. Well designed projects conclude in a public product that may make a community contribution and allow young people to experience the benefits of service.

Patty Alper adds an eighth benefit. She wants every kid to have a mentor and thinks projects are the right place to connect.

Alper explains the role of a project-based mentor in her book, Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America.

Read the full article about how mentors enhance project-based learning by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.