Author: William McDonald-Newman

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Collectively Designing Mentorship: A Journey

by William McDonald-Newman

What do you do when mentorship doesn’t exist? Build it. Or at least that’s what we did.

I was hired in Fall ’24 to be the Assistant Coordinator of Supplemental Instruction (SI). At that time, I barely knew what SI was. Weeks into the job I had student staffers, SI Leaders, asking for help that I didn’t yet know how to give, but I knew a thing SI Leaders do. At a study table, an SI Leader redirects questions, they pivot and pull in others to give them a chance to build confidence by helping their peers. So, I did an approximation of that. I connected one extremely competent student staffer with the newcomer dealing with challenges.

Then it happened again. And again.

By the time winter term rolled around, I was getting better at my job. I knew enough to help, but there were times when a peer mentor was needed, and there was no structure. I recommended this student, that student; the experienced and friendly and knowledgeable, to those looking for mentorship. Usually, I had the chance to chat with both students first, to prep the duo for success, but not always.

I like structure. Not too much, but enough to help people succeed. The system as it stood was messy, improvised, and only helped those who came to me and asked. Chatting it over with some of those I’d directed students towards, that I’d asked to be informal mentors, we decided to make it an actual ‘thing.’ I sent out one email for volunteers and got twelve replies from our team of roughly forty: five seniors who wanted to help design it, and seven underclassmen who wanted to design it, train for it, and be mentors. It only took three meetings.

Meeting Overviews

Meeting 1 involved collecting what mattered, what they wanted it to be. I suggested things here and there, largely to consolidate similar ideas, but that was it.

Meeting 2 involved splitting into two groups going over what their mentors had done, what a mentor can’t do, what the mentor/mentee relationship should be, and comparing between the groups.

Meeting 3 was for consolidation. We put all the pieces together and made it into a training schedule.

Here is a detailed list of meeting topics and notes, so you can see the range and depth of thinking in each meeting. The topics and plan were student-driven and informed by SI Leader experiences and perspective on how we could better support incoming SI Leaders.

So What?

It’s all about the journey. I believe that, and this journey reminded me of it. At the end of that term, we had a document, a plan, and a group of brilliant people who were ready to make it a reality, but we all knew it’d evolve. It wasn’t a project that ended, it was a journey with a pause. Now, I’m looking at spring and planning another design meeting.

As a supervisor this felt easy, natural, but it was only that because we did it together. Twelve students built something that would help the nineteen joining the team then, the eighteen joining the team soon, and who knows how many to come thereafter.

My advice is to trust good people to do good things, to build something ambitious, insightful, and amazing. There may be moments where you need to keep things on track, clarify confusion, or keep the creation inside the scope of your resources, but be honest, be open, and be flexible.

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Improv for Leadership and Team Building

by William McDonald-Newman

Amongst the myriad tools for making teams better, or for being a better leader, supervisor, or facilitator, I’m constantly impressed by the power of improv. The skillset goes by many names: flexibility, adaptability, or being quick on your feet. All of these generally refer to the same things, and improv is perhaps one of the more socially pressurized contexts for learning them. Beyond the ability to refer to yourself as “flexible” with confidence, improv (or something improv adjacent) can be personally and professionally rewarding.

For clarity, improv (abbreviating improvisation) is most often used in reference to theater techniques developed to help people thrive in the spotlight. Whatever hiccups or challenges, improv experience prepares a performer to adapt and can give a shy performer a lower stakes form of showmanship. Personally, I think performing Shakespeare is a much scarier challenge than to be amongst a smaller crew of people in a make-shift show based on audience suggestions (no offense intended to the truly stunning skills of improv troupes everywhere, who do amazing things).

Like many practices, removing improv from its home context is a jump, but much less of one than it seems! Facilitating a team meeting is not so far off from a stage performance, and sometimes it can be far more tightly scripted. Committees following rules of order can be extraordinary to watch, a careful ballet of words and forms, though, sadly, far less likely to be accompanied by music or applause. Applying improv skills to meetings can make a facilitator, or a participant, far more comfortable when technology fails, when someone is put on the spot, or when disagreement arises.

So, knowing a bit of what improv is, and how it applies outside of theater, how do we get better at it? What a fantastic question that I ask myself all the time!

For those looking to jump in the deep end, improv classes/workshops are not uncommon in many cities, especially if there’s a theater community. For the more cautious, there are party games like Yes, And or That Escalated Quickly, with summer camp games like Mafia as excellent additional options. For the more game inclined, Dungeons & Dragons is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) that has spent the last decade or so blossoming in part thanks to improv/theater performers. D&D is the most common of many TTRPGs, ranging from the most esoterically math inclined to essentially improv games with a single page rulebook. Lasers and Feelings, one of the more well-known one-page games, is a single 8.5×11 meant to get you pretending to be a crewmember of what is definitely not the copyrighted Star Trek franchise.

Whatever your preferred starting point, the key to improv is practicing it in a lower stake environment first. Improvisation is valuable when it helps ease the confusion, startlement, or fear that can come from surprises. It gives you reflexes for those moments when your mind goes blank, or when your face wants to betray how you actually feel. It’s also a great, borderline miraculous, excuse to interact with others, form social connections, and try something new.

Life doesn’t come with a script, and we all learn to improvise to handle that. Growing in a skill you may not know you had, and doing so intentionally, purposefully, can make you a far better team member, facilitator, friend, and leader. If you were itching for an excuse to try a party game, start a D&D group, or take a class, here’s a reason.