Students engage in discussions and activities to develop awareness about themselves as individuals and document their preferences, strengths and challenges.

Purpose

Mentees will deepen self-knowledge by identifying and expressing what they like, what they think they are good at and what they perceive as difficult for them.

Mentees discuss with the team the things that are working well and the things that they may want to improve/change.

Mentees begin to learn about goals and the concept of working towards something they want to change or achieve.

Mentees review all the information gathered from the Personal Inventory activity (modified from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/pdf/selfesteem/selfesteem.pdf ) and work with the Self-Determination Program team to determine if there is something within that information they would like to change or improve – For example:

• One challenge shared by student: “I want to be able to read a book by myself.”

Materials

• Personal Inventory worksheet

Mentor Preparation

Mentors:

Mentors begin to independently prepare their own examples to share during the lesson.

• decide who will introduce the lesson
• prepare examples from the Personal Inventory worksheet to share with mentees
  • Mentor 1: “In school, what class were you good at?” Mentor 2: “I was good at Math, Science and P.E.”
• Prepare questions from each section to pose to their mentees
  • “Outside of school, what are you good at? For example – cooking, doing homework, doing artwork, something else?”
• role-play their part of the activity in an online meeting
• role-play with Self-Determination Program staff, prior to the Personal Inventory activity session with the mentees

Activity

Mentees are given an introduction to the concept of self-esteem and learn that it refers to how much a person values themselves and their accomplishments. Most importantly it refers to seeing yourself in a positive way that is realistic.

As part of the introduction, the mentor provides a personal example, such as, “I’m really good at performing arts, but I get nervous in front of large groups of people.” This example helps students understand that, although something may be difficult, they can still feel good about themselves and take pride in what they do.

Students go through a self-discovery process using the Personal Inventory tool in order to identify their likes/dislikes, strengths and challenges. Mentors provide examples to the mentees in each section. Mentees respond to statements using partner-assisted scanning, yes/no responses and/or their speech-generating device.

The mentee responses are summarized and reviewed with their mentor.

Adaptations – Adapted from DiscoveryEducation.com

• Remove statements from the inventory tool that are not applicable to the student
• Modify the inventory tool to provide set choices with the option for ‘something else’

Resources

“The Story on Self-Esteem.” KidsHealth – the Web’s Most Visited Site about Children’s Health. The Nemours Foundation, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/self-esteem.html.