The Mentorship Project

Hello all! My name is Jeff Kruchkow and I’ll be the head of the Mentorship Project. To me, mentorship is divided into two areas: education and involvement. For the rest of the 2018 year, my goal for both of these is to extend as many resources as possible to Judges so that everyone in the Great Lakes region can get what they want out of the program. To that end, I’ll be starting up a number of projects in the region aimed giving Judges more chances to get involved in a variety of ways, as well as providing resources to Judges new and old alike who want to learn and further develop their skills.

 

 

Projects

• Judge Classes – Spencer Cole
  • Some of you may have already seen the posts about the Judge classes currently running. And the plan is to continue with these and keep improving and tweaking them.
  • There are 2 different classes which will each be offered bi-annually.
    • L1 Class: Aimed at helping prepare L0s for the L1 test, as well as helping new L1s fill in potential knowledge gaps.
    • L2 Class: Aimed at L1s working toward L2 and new L2s looking to solidify knowledge.
  • All classes will be open to any who wish to attend a session. While the goal is to help Judge work toward advancement, the classes also represent a good way for even experienced Judges to brush up on a topic.

• The Library
  • We have a ton of great Judges in the region who have produced a lot of great content. However, it can be difficult to find and reference that content.
  • The Library will be a central repository of conference presentations, Judge classes, articles, reports, and official documents all organized for easy study and reference and conveniently located on the Great Lakes Judge Blog.

• Next Step (Existing Program) – Meg Baum
  • Becoming a new Judge can be an intimidating process, you’re all of a sudden part of this huge organization and it can be daunting to figure out where to start, or what to do next.
  • The Next Step project will work to help new Judge feel included in the program and give them tools to help decide what they want to do in the program in two ways:
    • First, we’ll be making sure all our welcome documents are up-to-date and also include information on various areas and paths that new L1s can take in the program.
    • Second, the new team members will reach out to new L1s and make sure they’re getting along well, and to provide any assistance/information needed.

• Project Help Wanted
  • Ever wanted to do more in the program but don’t know how? Well the Help Wanted project is here to solve all your problems.
  • The Help Wanted project will maintain a list of all current regional projects and which of those projects need more hands on deck so that judge in search of ways to do more can easily see all the different areas they can get involved in.
  • This project will work closely with the New Judge Outreach project to make sure that opportunities are being communicated well to our new Judges.

 

We want YOU!

As you can probably tell, getting all these projects up and running is going to take some work. To that end, the Mentorship project will be actively recruiting Judges to help work on these projects. A future update will include a more detailed look at each of these, as well as number of team members we’re looking for and what kind of time commitment we might need. Keep an eye out for these if you’re interested, or just contact me directly.

Finally, if you have any suggestions for things the mentorship project can do, improvements to existing projects, or if you’re interested in joining a project, please contact me via Facebook/E-mail/JudgeApps. My metaphorical door is always open and I’m always looking for ways to do better and help make every Judge in the region the best Judge that they want to be!