Mentor Training Call Series – Call #4: Expectations Explained: Yours and Theirs 1/16 & 1/18

 Are you considering mentoring apprentices or interns on your ranch or farm?

Want to improve apprentice recruitment, selection, training, education/work balance work and feedback? Join us on our free mentor training call series, designed to help you and your apprentice have a more successful season!

Calls are led by NAP’s founding mentor and mentor training specialist, Julie Sullivan. Call topics are based on over 15 years of experience mentoring young agrarians (and all of the trials and tribulation, joys and missteps encountered along the way). For more mentor training resources from the New Agrarian Program, visit this page.

Each call topic is offered twice via Zoom, on the Tuesday at 12pm or the Thursday at 7am. See below for individual call descriptions and the registration. Send any questions to Julie Sullivan at julie@quiviracoalition.org.

Mentor Training Call Dates 2023-2024, All times are Mountain

Call #4: January 16th noon, Jan 18th 7 am

• Expectations Explained: Yours and Theirs
• You’ve chosen your apprentice and are preparing for their arrival. How do you set clear expectations of job responsibilities, days off, work schedules, team meetings, and your workplace culture? Writing an apprenticeship agreement, creating a skills list, and setting clear boundaries at the beginning can support a successful apprenticeship.

Call #5: February 6th noon, Feb 8th 7 am

• Connecting Work and Education 
• How do you structure the workday, week, and month so that priorities are established, and both work and education happen? Strategies shared include weekly planning meetings, how to find those ‘teachable moments’ during a workday, and ways to do up-front training to get your apprentice going and maintain focus, communication and motivation in the busy season.

Call #6: March 5th noon, March 7th 7 am

• Sustaining Apprentice Motivation 
  Apprentice motivation can falters a few months in. We’ll discuss ways to co-create apprentice goals that take advantage of the built-in learning at your operation, and ways to keep that momentum going through the season, including identifying apprentice solo study, local resource people to learn from, and visiting other operations. Skill sheets are great prompts for this so we’ll discuss ways to make them truly effective and useful to you and your apprentice.

Call #7: April 23rd noon, April 25th 7 am

• Feedback to Feed Forward
• Actionable feedback catalyzes learning and motivation by correcting errors while looking ahead to further development. We’ll share a variety of tried and true methods for productive feedback conversations both scheduled and impromptu, as well as how to get feedback to help you grow as a mentor.