Introducing Student Guide by Masai School

When students join Masai School, their mind is full of questions – 

• Where will the classes happen? How will I attend them? 
• What if I have questions? Who will answer them? 
• How will my attendance be tracked? 
• What is Slack? How to use Zoom, and other software? 
• And zillions of other things 

Although we try our best to resolve their queries, it’s almost impossible to cater to all their questions, and with this problem statement in mind, was born the idea of “Student Guides” 

What is the Student guide program?

Student Guide is a program launched by Masai School, where Seniors who are currently studying at Masai volunteer to help the new batch of incoming students with non-legal and non-curriculum-related doubts.

Since the seniors have been a part of Masai, they are best suited, and equipped to empathise and help the students with their queries, and support them. 

Before the curriculum starts – A student guide will reach out to the students 15 days before they are onboarded, and support them until the end of Unit-1, which equates to about 7 weeks. In this time period, it is expected that the students will have accustomed to their new life at Masai.

What kind of help will a student guide provide? 

There are a lot of things Student guides can help their juniors with – 

• Provide  Emotional Support to students
• Motivate Juniors for their journey at MASAI
• Conduct Group sessions that will encourage them to do better
• Conduct one-on-one sessions for personal connect
• Encourage Juniors to attend classes and do not engage in plagiarism. 
• Encourage Juniors to attend all evaluations. 
• Ensure that your students have joined Slack Workspace, Canvas Course,  and OJ 
• Ensure that students are aware of Masai’s HALP ticketing system. 
• Share personal experiences to make the student comfortable, if needed.

All in all, a Student guide is someone who will be with their juniors until they get comfortable with the Masai ecosystem. 

Who can become a student guide? What are the benefits of becoming one? 

Helping someone is good karma, and a great way to feel good about yourself, and help the world become a better place. 

In your journey as a “Student guide”, you will interact with multiple students, and engage with them at various levels which would help improve your communication, and leadership skills. Apart from these experiential benefits, each student guide would be paid an honorarium of Rs. 4000 for 7 weeks of service. 

Only Unit-2 students are eligible to become Student Guides, and they are shortlisted based on their intent to help their peers, their performance in DSA, coding, and assignments, and their overall personality and communication skills. 

On being selected, the student guides will initiate conversations with the incoming students on Whatsapp, and connect them with on personal 1-o-1 calls in the initial weeks, as well as group meetings that are to be hosted Weekly. 

In total, a student guide will spend 3-4 hours weekly with their assigned juniors to help them in any capacity they can, thereby making their life simpler, and easier at Masai.