Getting Started¶

Welcome! We're thrilled that you are interested in becoming a Mentor for CodingNomads. This document describes what mentorship means to CodingNomads, and what we look for in an ideal mentor. Please read this document carefully. If you have questions please reach out to Ryan, via .

What Mentorship Means To Us¶

At CodingNomads, mentorship means that we care for our students as the individual person they are, and that we try our best to help students have an enjoyable, productive and meaningful learning process.

Think of yourself as a knowledgeable learning buddy to your student. Your mentee should feel comfortable contacting you when they need you.

As a great mentor, you know the course material well and you know how to efficiently find solutions which you don't yet have. One important lesson is to help your students to learn how to figure challenges out by themselves. That means that you will already know the answer, but you don't tell the solution to your student directly. Instead, when and where possible, you guide them on the path of figuring it out themselves.

As a mentor, you know that it's ultimately the student's effort that makes the difference whether they will learn a lot or only a little. However, you also know that there is so much you can do to make it easier for your mentees to sit down and take that necessary effort.

Check in with your students frequently, make them understand that you care for their learning process and that you are available to help. Be polite, positive, fun, and encouraging - and help your students with creating learning plans and sticking to them. Get to know your students, be compassionate, and try your best to improve the learning process for each individual student that you are working with.

In a nutshell, mentorship at CodingNomads is all about caring. When a student knows that they have a mentor who cares about their learning and their progress, it's a game changer. At CodingNomads, we want our mentors to be game changers.

• Mentor Tips

What We Don't Do¶

• We never make our students feel insecure about not knowing something.
• We don't assume that a student "should" know something already. If they don't know something, we patiently explain.
• We don't discriminate against anyone for any reason.

We're all humans here, let's be nice to each other.

What We Look For In A Mentor¶

We want to work with mentors who know their topics well and enjoy helping others learn. If you want to mentor e.g. for our Python course, you should know Python well. If you want to mentor for Java, you should know Java. The course that you are mentoring for should be a rich learning experience for your student, which requires a certain level of expertise and fluidity with the technology.

That said, we care a lot about professional development and want to give you opportunities to grow as well. We want to work with mentors who are interested in learning and education, who want to improve their own capacities as programmers and educators. Because of this, mentors who have worked with us for more than 1 year will have the opportunity to take any of our online courses free of charge.

We want to work with mentors who are excited to give input and suggestions to us and their fellow mentors, as well as learn from our students and mentor community. We want to work with mentors who are motivated to help with improving CodingNomads' courses and mentorship service for the benefit of all our students.