The Student Whisperer: Inspiring Genius

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Perhaps silver bells and cockleshells worked for contrary Miss Mary, but master gardeners do not “make” their gardens grow. And yet it is clearly not by chance or accident that they succeed. They understand the principles that govern their success, and they know their role in the process. Whether explicitly or intuitively, they understand natural law and they orchestrate circumstances to cooperate with it for an optimal crop.

Like a master gardener, a great mentor, a Student Whisperer, knows how to set the stage for transformational experiences—as often as they are needed. She knows how to create the environment where such feelings and experiences are frequent, how to use such experiences to help us discover and improve ourselves, and even how to repeat and reinforce such feelings so that our motivation and efforts are sustained. A great mentor cares—and she is effective.

This book is designed to help you become a great mentor—a true Student Whisperer and leader at the highest level. It will also help you work effectively with such mentors as you pursue your goals and life mission. This book is part deep teaching of the vital principles of great Leadership Education, part self-help workshop, part example through parables, and part exploration of the great ideas that make mentoring and quality learning most effective at all ages.
This book is specially designed and organized with a dual purpose:

1. To help readers experience and recognize what it feels like to be greatly mentored
2. To concurrently outline the principles of great mentoring and help readers turn them into personal skills and even habits

The first part of this book is told as a personal narrative, and immerses readers in a series of life events as a student learns from her mentors and grows in the process. The intent is for readers feel what it is like to experience working with committed and demanding mentors as they go through Book One.

The second part contains information that is vital to becoming a great mentor , and guides the reader through several exercises that help turn the concepts and principles of great mentoring into personal skills and strengths.

The authors have worked together for nearly two decades—as many of the stories in Book One show. Oliver used the methods taught here in mentoring Tiffany and many other people, and Tiffany has applied and expanded on the same principles and methods in her mentoring through LEMI for well over a decade.

Over the course of these many years, they have learned what works through direct mentoring, and vicariously through mentor-protégées. This book imparts what they have come to understand of truly great mentoring—what they call Student Whispering.

Chapters 6-9 provide foundational information valuable for all mentors and those who are mentored.

Chapters 10-13 help readers throw off past biases about teaching and establish a transformational foundation for great mentoring. Topics include:

* The two major balances
* The various voices nearly all students listen to, and how to speak the language of each most effectively
* Seven key questions Student Whisperers ask about each mentee
* How archetypes are central to great education and Student Whispering, and how to apply this knowledge as a mentor

Chapters 14-16 deal with further transformation.