Welcome to Curious Cardinals! Before your student embarks on their learning journey, we want to share expectations, policies, and best practices to ensure seamless collaboration between you, your mentor, and the CC education team.
How to Access Your First Lesson
Please make sure your student can access their sessions.
⚠️ These next steps will enable you to access our secure Zoom links on the Platform, over email, and in calendar invites. Your student won’t be able to log into their first session unless these are completed! |
Sign into the Curious Cardinals Platform.
Once signed in, add a student to your account.
Please share the password you created for them so that they can log in when it’s time for sessions.
Preparing for Your First Session
For Academic Mentorship Engagements:
Prior to the first session, we ask that you send any materials that would be helpful for the mentor to review beforehand. This includes homework assignments, their most recent test(s), their course syllabi, and the textbook they are using. The more material and context you share with them, the easier it is for them to dive into the material and begin supporting the student!
During the first session, the mentor will use the first half of the lesson to get to know each other and build a relationship that has a foundation of trust. From there, they will dive into some of the material to diagnose gaps in understanding and where the student lacks confidence to provide targeted support.
For Exploratory Journey & Passion Project Engagements
For the first session, your student is not expected to prepare or bring anything except a willingness to learn! Their mentor will prepare the first lesson, informed by the information you shared during the intake process.
Every first lesson begins with the mentor sharing their background and interests to build a relationship with the student, and learn more about the student's motivations.
Mentors will end the first session by teaching one or two interesting concepts to get the student excited for the learning journey ahead, and then share a proposal on a plan for future lessons based on the student's feedback.
Through a plan co-designed with your student, the mentor curates and creates a personalized curriculum based on your student's needs and goals. Mentors work closely with our Education team, comprised of learning experts from Harvard and Stanford's Graduate School of Education. The Edteam supports mentors by supplying vetted curriculum modules and coaching them on learning design.
Lesson notes
At the end of each session, mentors guide their students through reflections on what they have learned and document reflections. You can access these Session Notes on the platform.
Learn more about how to access session notes here.
After Your First Session
After the first session, we will check in to make sure the mentor fit was strong and to answer any questions, concerns, or feedback.
Since the student mentor match is so important, we want to know immediately if the fit didn’t feel right. Usually, students have a pretty strong sense of if it will be a great fit after the first session, so we appreciate your feedback as soon as possible!
If the fit didn’t feel right, we will offer a rematch at no additional charge.
During this check in, we will also share lesson notes from the first meeting as well as how to access these lesson notes on an ongoing basis.
We will also introduce you to Lily from our student success team who will be your point of contact for any questions along your student’s learning journey!
After Your 6th Session
Every 6th session, you will receive a synthesized report from our Student Success team to understand where your student is excelling, where they have room for additional growth, and to inspire dinner table conversation! We will add any meaningful feedback and progress updates to your student’s learning profile to keep up to date with their opportunities for growth and accomplishments!
During this learning milestone, we will reevaluate your student’s goals and determine if the initial mentor is the best equipped to help your student reach that next milestone.
Sometimes, student/mentor relationships last over 12 months! Other times, it is in the best interest of the student to gain exposure to different mentors to receive inspiration and guidance from an alternative perspective.
Rematches
At Curious Cardinals, we really pride ourselves on facilitating long lasting mentorship-like relationships, so when conflicts arise, we take it very seriously and want to ensure a smooth transition.
We require mentors to commit to a minimum number of sessions (8+) to which you have purchased a package. If a mentor has a unique life circumstance that does not allow them to fulfill the commitment, you will have the opportunity to work with a new mentor at no additional cost, and we will offer an $95 refund.
We ask that mentors commit to at least a semester of working with their students prior to accepting a new engagement. We define semesters from Jan-May, June-August, Sept-Dec since these most align with the college semester/quarter system.
During a rematch, we will make sure we gather substantial feedback and notes from the previous mentor to share with the new mentor.
We often have the original mentor involved in the rematch process, so they can share the qualities and characteristics the student would connect well with. Often, a mentor will even recruit a good friend they trust to join the CC mentor team
Our education team will be involved throughout the process, sharing learning resources and notes/feedback so the transition feels seamless.
How to Contact Us
Parents are fundamental to a student's learning journey, so we greatly value your questions and feedback. Please do not hesitate to reach out!
Mentors are your main point of contact. You and your student(s) should communicate directly with your mentor on scheduling needs, lesson feedback, or curricula content. Mentors will then work with our Education team to make adjustments when appropriate!
Lily (lily@curiouscardinals.com) is our Student Success Lead. You should never hesitate to reach out to her with feedback, questions, or any concerns you don’t feel comfortable raising directly with your mentor. She is also available to help you pause engagements, explore new opportunities or mentors, and so much more!
For issues regarding billing & the tech platform, the best way is to email support@curiouscardinals.com and we will be there to support you!
Email is the primary form of communication with mentors and the admin team. Keeping all discussions centralized in email is key to promoting safety and expedient communications. If you would prefer to use another mode of communication, please contact Lily.
Scheduling, Cancellation, and Rescheduling
Mentors will share scheduling options for your first session and share how to join the Zoom call from our platform.
Please find a time to meet with mentors within the first week of being introduced, as schedules book up quickly.
Please determine a consistent, recurring time to meet so that your student and their mentor can protect those times. Over the past two years, Curious Cardinals matches who have met at the same time each week have had our most effective, transformative engagements.
Providing advance notice is vital in ensuring smooth scheduling. We recommend establishing a recurring schedule with your mentor to ensure consistency, and ask that you always give them as much notice in advance as possible if your schedule has changed.
Please note that canceling within 24 hours of a lesson will result in you being charged the full rate for the scheduled lesson.
Please note that you will be charged for any asynchronous work done by your mentor that exceeds 15 minutes. We encourage mentors to support their mentee out of session, text them good luck, and hold them accountable. Mentorship should not feel transactional and those little good luck texts or casual check-ins are often what make a student feel most supported. With that said, once mentors are on the brink of spending 15 minutes or more supporting students on assignments, they will notify you and make sure they have permission to proceed accordingly with logging the time they spend (at our standard hourly rate) on the platform.
If you would like to pause your lessons, end an engagement, or find a new mentor, please email Lily.
Payment
The minimum initial commitment for mentorship with Curious Cardinals is a 10-hour package ($950 total).
We request packages to begin so that our mentors can plan concrete milestones and establish goals to work towards.
We have also seen that 10 hours is the minimum time commitment to see student outcomes and build a robust relationship with a mentor.
Our education team spends significant time upfront onboarding the mentor for each individualized engagement, collaborating with them to design a tailored learning plan and develop resources and curricula for their students, with the goal to build a lasting relationship.
Finally, many of our mentors are first generation, low income college students that rely on Curious Cardinals as their part time job and source of income, so we ask for a 10 hour minimum to guarantee financial stability for our mentors from their Curious Cardinals engagements.
If you use more hours than the 10-hour package, your card on file will be automatically charged for the extra time on a bimonthly schedule.
If you do not wish to continue with mentorship beyond this initial commitment, you will have to contact support@curiouscardinals.com and your mentor to not be charged overage fees.
We value all members of our community which is why these policies are designed with intention and care. If you wish to understand more about why and how they are implemented, please reach out to Lily (lily@curiouscardinals.com).
We are here to support you and your students in having the best learning experience possible! Please be sure to reach out to us with any questions (support@curiouscardinals.com).