Partnership with MENTOR: Executive Function Training and Making a Difference

Beyond BookSmart is committed to making a difference in the lives of all children, regardless of financial status. To fulfill this part of our mission, we provide Executive Function training to those who have a direct impact on children. We are now working with the Massachusetts branch of The National Mentoring Partnership. For nearly 25 years, Mass Mentoring Partnership, affiliated with the national MENTOR, has developed and delivered resources to youth mentoring programs nationwide, promoting quality for mentoring through standards, cutting-edge research and state of the art tools. In Massachusetts, Mass Mentoring Partnership supports youth mentoring organizations that reach more than 30,000 students a year.

This past year, Beyond BookSmart has used a train-the-trainer model to teach both leaders of organizations and mentors how to work more effectively with children who don’t have the opportunity to hire personal Executive Function coaches. Our CEO Michael Delman provides both the understanding of how to effect change and some of the tools that we use with our own students, giving these organizations a better understanding of Executive Function challenges and coaching strategies. To date, we have conducted Executive Function training workshops for leaders of organizations and/or mentors from the organizations below. We are also reaching out to Mentoring Partnership of New York, Illinois Mentoring Partnership and MENTOR’s affiliate in Rhode Island. Last month we gave some free consulting to leaders of Mentoring Partnership of New York as they are working hard on some new initiatives. It is always a pleasure to make a difference for people who are making a difference!  

“Mass Mentoring Partnership and over 40 mentoring programs across Massachusetts have been fortunate enough to get to work with Michael Delman from Beyond BookSmart. Through three highly enriching workshops, he has generously worked with our community of mentoring programs in building our capacity to better understand how to support young people in improving their attitudes towards school and learning. Through a perfect balance of theory, practical strategies, tools and simulations, Michael created an incredibly rich learning environment during their workshops that brought to life some of the invaluable concepts around executive functioning and motivation that help our programs meet young people where they are at to help them move forward in their academics and self-efficacy. He has been nothing but a pleasure to work with, travelling across the state to conduct these workshops and we can’t thank him enough for donating his time and expertise to bring this content, which is an excellent fit for the mentoring field, to life for us and the programs we work with.”  

-Nate Baum, Manager of Training and Technical Assistance

Mass Mentoring Partnership