Mentoring. Registration and Getting Students

1. Mentor Registration

1.1. Registration in RS APP

  1. To become a mentor, you need to fill out the form - app.rs.school/registry/mentor.
  2. Some time after registration (from a week to several months), the mentor receives an assignment to the course. You will receive a message to your specified email (and/or Telegram account) asking you to confirm registration and an invitation to an organizational webinar. During registration confirmation, mentors can specify:
    • Preferences for student location (your city, country, or random location).
    • The number of students the mentor wants to mentor.
    • Friends/colleagues whom the mentor wants to mentor. Keep in mind that corejs interview, interviews at EPAM JSLab will be conducted by another mentor/interviewer, and some assignments are checked through cross-check, jury, etc. If your acquaintance is not on the list, ask them to register for the course - app.rs.school/registry/student.
  3. After confirming registration, you will receive:
  • Access to the mentor chat
  • Information about the introductory session for mentors

1.2. Communication Channels

  • Telegram channel for mentors. You receive the channel link after confirming registration
  • Weekly meeting for mentors. Takes place once a week. Duration 30 minutes. Participation is optional. The meeting is recorded, meeting notes are sent to Telegram.
  • Chats where students communicate. Discord and Telegram
  • Closed group of activists and mentors in Discord. Here we discuss the educational process, platform, and everything related to learning at RS School. How to get access to the group is described below.
  • Getting mentor role in Discord
    1. Open - https://app.rs.school/profile
    2. Authorize through Discord in the Discord Integration block
    3. Add your GitHub name to your Discord nickname https://docs.rs.school/#/rs-school-chats?id=discord
    4. Write a message in the Discord channel #mentoring. Example message: "Hi everyone, my name is Juan and I'm a mentor from Colombia"

1.3. Getting Access to Private Student Repositories

  1. All students work with private GitHub repositories of RS School https://github.com/rolling-scopes-school
  2. All mentors are added to a separate GitHub Team. You can check your invite here - https://github.com/orgs/rolling-scopes-school/invitation
  3. Mentors have access to all student repositories for this course.
  4. By default, mentors are subscribed to all changes in student repositories. You can unsubscribe in GitHub settings (Profile>Settings>Notifications>Automatically watch repositories) or using the script - https://github.com/Shastel/runsubscribe

1.4. Getting Familiar with the Curriculum and Schedule

The course consists of 4 stages: preparatory and three main stages. Mentors help students during the second and third stages. You need to register separately for each mentoring stage.
Curriculum:

2. Getting Students

2.1. Algorithm for Distributing Students to Mentors

Step #1 Mentors Confirm Course Registration

  • Mentor confirms course registration - https://app.rs.school/course/mentor/confirm?course={courseId}.
  • During registration confirmation, the mentor:
    • can add friends/colleagues they want to mentor to their group.
    • specifies the number of students they want to mentor
    • leaves preferences for student location
    • if necessary, the mentor can change these parameters by submitting the confirmation form again

Step #2 Random Distribution of Students to Mentors

  • Takes place on the student distribution day
  • If the mentor has free spots, they receive random students.
    1. If one free spot remains - 2 random students
    2. If two or more spots remain - desired number of students plus two.
  • Each mentor is assigned a minimum of 4 interviews
  • Mentor preferences for student location are taken into account
    • Mentor and students from the same city
    • Mentor and students from the same country
  • Students of different skill levels. (For example, first by score, Nth by score, 2Nth by score, etc.)

Step #3 Technical screening

  1. We publish the distribution.
  2. Students contact mentors.
  3. Mentors conduct Technical screening within two weeks from the student distribution day

Step #4 Troubleshooting

  • Opportunity for mentor to transfer extra students. For example, all turned out to be capable, but the mentor cannot teach all of them
  • Location coordinators check that all active students have received mentors
  • Opportunity for mentor to pick up students instead of those who didn't show up for the interview
  • Student changed their mind about continuing education or switched to short track after random distribution occurred
  • After random distribution, mentor wrote that they cannot participate in mentoring
  • Exchange of students between mentors. For example, due to time zone, etc.

Step #5 Picking Students from Waitlist

Waitlist — a list of students who either were not invited to an interview, or were rejected by a mentor after the interview. From this list, mentors, if they have capacity, can pick up students.

2.2. Picking Students from Waitlist

  1. Open https://app.rs.school/
  2. Click "Interviews"
  3. Click "Available students"
  4. Click "Want To Interview"
  5. Contact the student yourself (they don't receive notifications).
  6. If you're ready to take a student without an interview - submit an empty feedback form, selecting "Yes, I do." in the Resume section

2.3. Pair Mentoring

Mentors can join together and mentor students jointly. In this case, students are still assigned to a specific mentor, but mentors in the combined group can review assignments as convenient. For example, review assignments and conduct meetings in turns.

2.4. Gentleman's Agreement

Mentors have priority right to hire students they teach to their company/project/team.

Pay it forward

The school operates on the "Pay it forward" principle. According to this principle, we expect that students who studied at the school for free return as mentors to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of students.

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