"(Redfield) mentors are teachers, who apart from their classroom teaching take on an additional professional task that requires specific study and expertise. They are selected to fulfill this task according to individual preference, professional commitments, and personal suitability for working with individual students and parents. But all members of staff, whether they are mentors or not, are involved in a team approach based on the common awareness that they are educators of the whole person, above all, by their personal example of their own virtues."
Extract from “Parents for Education”
Virginia Monagle in Kappa Delta Phi Record (Fall 1993)
The personalised Mentoring System is the most distinctive feature of Redfield. The mentors support parents in exercising their duty as primary educators. An individual mentor, from amongst the teachers of the school, is appointed to each student and given the necessary training to do the job.
The mentor meets with a student fortnightly and with the parents termly, to review progress and establish personal goals. The focus is on leading the student to think for himself and to work on acquiring the balanced strengths that he will need in adult life. Through his rapport and friendship with the student, the mentor provides an effective service of personal example, guidance, and advice. He helps your son to develop positive habits and areas of character development such as responsibility, thoughtfulness and good use of time.
"In my 10 years at Redfield College, I was undeservedly blessed to have phenomenal mentors. They would consider themselves unremarkable but their coaching was essential to my growth in knowing who I was and what I thought was important to a meaningful life, building my productive work habits, the value and primacy of deep and personal relationship with God, my family and friends...all the above were done with a genuine sense of care for and investment in me as an individual. These lessons have sustained me.
Over 25 years have passed and I would still seek counsel from either man." - Joe James, Redfield College Old Boy
Parents comment on how helpful it is, particularly when their sons are in their teenage years, to be able to rely on a trusted mentor to reinforce key values with their son. The mentor is ideally placed to coordinate, on behalf of the parents, the efforts of all who contribute to their son's education. He is able to provide objective suggestions and useful observations for both the parents and the student's teachers.
The Mentoring System at Redfield is unique to the Pared schools in Australia. As far as we know there is no other mentoring system that is one on one, for all students, and involves all parents in regular interviews, in which mentors are prepared to offer all the time that is needed to students when a student has a particular need.
