The tale of two Joannas
On a recent 1:1 mentoring day at a school in London, everyone got a bit confused.
Let’s go back a bit....
On Oppidan mentoring days, we write a report after each individual session for every student.
It’s time consuming; you can’t automate it, things sometimes go wrong, but it allows us to dig into a student’s individual experience and share that with the school.
That in-depth insight is a key factor in what a school needs from Oppidan. It's not sexy, it’s not AI, but it is crucial.
It’s not really mentoring otherwise...
So, for any given day, it’s (say) 60 reports after the day, 300 words long, shared with the teacher, for 60 students.
You get the point.
After this mentoring day in question, once everything had been completed and the mentors had submitted their reports, the system showed two reports from the day about a girl called Joanna.
Oppidan Schools Manager, Ben, was confused.
Had a mentor made a mistake with names?
Why were there two reports about the same student?
What had gone wrong?
Ben got on the case, asking the mentors and spending ages trying to work out the cause. The reports were similar, but not the same and each mentor had clearly taken a slightly different perspective and found out different things about ‘Joanna 1’ and ‘Joanna 2’.
There must be two Joannas in the student cohort.
Ben phoned up the school.
There weren’t.
Hmmm.
The school lead searched through their database trying to match the subjects and interests in the reports to another student, in case the mentor had chosen the wrong name.
No luck. That wasn’t the problem either.
“Hang on. What if Joanna went back twice?” - said the school lead.
Ben laughed. Our programmes are good he thought, but would a student really go back later in the day for a second session when they didn’t have to?
Further calls with the mentors in question took place.
More back and forth.
Finally, it became clear: Joanna was one person. She HAD gone back twice. She’d met one of our mentors in the morning, and then filled an available empty slot with another mentor in the afternoon.
The teacher was shocked:
‘Oh gosh, she went in twice...!? I can actually belive that...she clearly loves mentoring. A lot.’
So, Joanna went back again. Twice the mentoring, twice the mentor, two reports.
Case closed.
We can’t claim everyone loves our mentoring as much as Joanna. It’s a slow burn and individualised; human-led help is never going to be a quick fix.
But, for students around the world, it’s that personalisation that yields the best results, in the short and long term.
To all the Joannas out there, get in touch: we’re here for you, especially if you want double sessions.
If you’re not a Joanna, but you want to benefit from mentoring, we’re here for you too.