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Online Training

With funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice, TCAM has created these free training resources.

Self-Paced Modules

These training modules incorporate mentoring research and best practices, interactive activities, opportunities to learn and practice skills, and recommended resources. Each of the modules can be completed in 30–40 minutes—at a time that’s convenient for you.

TCAM Online Training Modules for Staff

These training modules are designed to increase the capacity of mentoring program staff to provide evidence-based mentoring services to transform the lives of vulnerable youth.

Planning Mentor Training    
Provides strategies for planning group training to increase mentors’ knowledge and skills.
Developing Effective Training    
Reviews adult learning principles and describes structured group activities that can be used in mentor training.
Case Management in Mentoring Programs for System-Involved Youth    
Contains strategies and tools for fine-tuning your program’s approach to match supervision.
Mentee Orientation    
Helps mentoring program staff develop and deliver mentee orientation sessions that prepare mentees to enter into a mentoring relationship.
Mentoring Youth in Reentry    
Explores the typical experiences of youth in reentry and approaches to mentoring this population, and recommends strategies for mentoring program staff to use in recruiting, training, and supporting mentors to work with youth in reentry.
Staff Development for Mentoring Programs    
Shows mentoring program coordinators and agency leads how to assess your staff’s professional development needs and design and implement a staff professional development plan to enhance the performance and effectiveness of frontline workers.
Using TCAM Resources to Strengthen Your Mentoring Program    
Reviews the mentoring resources developed by The Center for the Advancement of Mentoring (TCAM) for community-based mentoring programs and addresses how to use the resources to strengthen your program.

TCAM Online Training Series for Mentors

This series of six online training modules for mentors focuses on how to be an effective mentor to a young person who is involved in the juvenile justice or foster care system or is at risk for gang involvement. The modules are designed to be used in combination with in-person mentor training provided by local mentoring programs.

What Is a Mentor?    
Describes the fundamentals of mentoring at-risk youth and the five critical elements of the mentor’s role: build trust, listen, encourage, be reliable, and enjoy your time together.
Understanding Your Mentee's Background    
Describes some critical challenges that mentees may have experienced and how these challenges may affect the mentoring relationship.
Understanding Your Mentee’s Development    
Explains three stages of development for youth: middle childhood, early adolescence, and adolescence, as well as how experiencing trauma or challenging circumstances can cause a young person to have difficulty forming healthy relationships.
Developing a Relationship with Your Mentee    
Explores the typical stages of a mentoring relationship and how to deal with challenges that may arise.
Communicating with Your Mentee    
Reviews key communication skills (such as using open-ended questions, reflecting, paraphrasing, and using “I” statements) that can help to strengthen mentoring relationships.
Overcoming Common Challenges    
Summarizes challenges that typically occur in mentoring relationships and prepares mentors to use a six-step problem-solving method when a challenge arises.

Facilitated Courses

By participating in TCAM’s facilitated courses, grantees will spend approximately two hours per week engaged in course activities that are either scheduled for a particular date and time (e.g., webinars) or completed at the individual’s convenience. TCAM staff will be available for assistance throughout the course. To reap the maximum benefits from the course, TCAM recommends that grantees participate in all sessions.

Sustainability Course: Establishing a Mentoring Legacy
This four-session, online course for OJJDP-funded mentoring grantees focuses on the Sustainability Wheel, a model for sustainability planning based on research and best practices for community-based youth-serving programs. Each session includes a webinar or teleconference that focuses on one or more essential sustainability strategy, brief readings and background materials related to the strategies, and an activity that contributes to the development of a sustainability plan.
Communications Course: Communications for Mentoring Programs
This two-part course provides tools to help you begin creating a strategic communications plan to sustain the positive outcomes of your mentoring program. The course includes a series of two webinars, targeted resources, and hands-on activities to broaden your thinking about communications for your mentoring program and jump-start your planning process.