To help you construct the training in a way that is applicable to your mentors, consider the following questions:

• What kind of mentors are being trained?
• Are they working with elementary, middle, or high school students?
• Are the prospective CPVs working short-term or long-term?
• Are they being paired with one student or multiple students?
• Do these students have any experience with youth and/or mentoring?

IN-PERSON FACILITATION TRAINING PREPARATION

We highly encourage conducting an in-person training. It is surprising how little capacity a CPV training actually requires. To plan an in-person training, a facilitator must study and understand the College Positive Volunteerism curriculum enough to feel comfortable presenting on it, answering questions about it, and guiding mentors to the CPV web resources available.

ALTERNATIVE: ONLINE VIDEO TRAINING PREPARATION

An online option is available for those who cannot conduct a training due to limited time, resources, or staff. You can direct those who are doing the online training to this page for all supplementary materials needed for the online training session. The facilitator must instruct the mentors to submit the completed activities and assessment in order to obtain the certificate.

Ensure that the training includes the following components:

1. an activities section
2. an assessment
3. the certification

Maintaining these elements is crucial a CPV training. We recognize that not all activities and questions will always be applicable to the audience you are presenting to, so you may have to change some things. CPV is flexible and it is encouraged that you tailor the presentation and training to the needs of your state, your program, and the education level of the K-12 students.

If you are using the CPV PowerPoint Training Presentation or the CPV Training Videos, the activities and assessment are already included. Both can be either an oral or handwritten. If you want to keep the assessment fun and casual, a collective, oral quiz might be a good idea. For a slightly more formal assessment, you can conduct a written quiz that requires submission.

For an in-person training, you will have to print out the activity packet supplement, the assessment student answer sheet, and the certificates. For an online training, you will have to send them the activity packet, and the student answer sheet; then have them send you their completed files in which you can then send over their certificates.

There are three surveys that make up the change over time evaluation, CPV Survey 1: Pre-Training, given anytime before the training; CPV Survey 2: Post-Training, given immediately after the training; and CPV Survey 3: End of Term, given at the end of the volunteer term.

Mark specific dates on your calendar as reminders of when to send out the corresponding links. By completing the surveys as well as encouraging your mentors to complete the surveys, we can gather feedback on how your mentoring program paired with CPV has a positive affect on both the mentees and the mentors, and will give us the opportunity to continuously improve the CPV curriculum.

Remember that your CPV students might get caught up with the many tasks that mentoring entails, and the CPV training might fade. You can share webinars, print out activities, send reminders, and plan college tours as a facilitator. If you see that the volunteers are forgetting about the college access component of their work, you can ask them to write reflection prompts or give them other flexible assignments centered on the idea of college access.