Students visit mentors in their homes for two hours, once per week for 28 weeks per year; 14 weeks per semester from approximately mid-August through mid-May. Work schedules that include Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday are most often from 3:45-5:45pm. Work times for Friday and Sunday will vary depending on student/mentor availability. There are also reports, called visit reflections, written by students, to be submitted within 24 hours of the end of each visit and approved at www.aapfe.org. These should take no more than one half hour per reflection. Finally, there are occasional greeting cards to be written and fund-raising activities in which to participate. It should be noted that if a student does not visit for two hours, once per week, 14 weeks per semester and accrue approved visit reflections for each visit, they will not be eligible for the scholarship, and no partial scholarships will be given.

The AA PFE coordinator pairs students with mentors, all of whom have been recommended either by local church elders/staff, teachers, parents, other trusted mentors or are known personally by the coordinator. All female students and most male students are matched with same gender mentors, or in the home of a couple. There is no age requirement for mentors; however, they must be considered by the coordinators to be “older adults” capable of mentoring and engaging in relationship with students. Mentors and students may not be related to one another. The coordinator(s) call and meet with all new mentors in their home, and although parents are not required to be present during visits, they are encouraged to also meet and interact with their student’s mentor.

• Respectful communication skills; written, verbal and nonverbal.
• Strong interpersonal skills; listen well, ask questions, exhibit interest in, compassion, and respect for people.
• Detailed work ethic; willingness and ability to perform household tasks thoroughly; systematic, observant of details, self-evaluate, self-correct work, ask for the next task.
• Flexibility; willing to do chores without expression of aversions, understanding mentor’s chore needs and preferences come first.
• Growth in fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Honesty.
• Consistency of demeanor and energy level; students are awake, cheerful, and polite.
• Reliable attendance record.
• Proficiency in writing; grammar, capitalization, and punctuation, as well as the constructs of a well-written paragraph—topic sentence, details, conclusion.
• Transportation; the student and/or their parent or guardian is responsible for the student’s transportation to and from their work location.
• Only one student per family may be involved in Andrews Academy's Partnering for Eternity program at a time.

The coordinator takes students' academic and extracurricular activities and student transportation availability into account, as well as mentor preferences. Students will work once per week for two hours at a regularly scheduled day and time. Keeping a consistent weekly schedule is important for students to easily remember it and for mentors to plan their week. Also, a consistent schedule helps the coordinator(s) conduct periodic "check-in" visits while the student is working.

• Watching TV
• Phone time
• Attending a school/church event
• Going to an entertainment venue
• Sabbath visits
• Sleeping
• Visiting while the mentor is not home
• Virtual visits

Mentors will be at their home or with their student for the full two-hours per visit. Students are expected to arrive on time at their mentor’s home and not leave early.

Students are allowed four absences (schedule changes) per semester; mentor-initiated absences are unlimited. However, nothing diminishes the minimum required number of visits, so make-up visits are sometimes needed on non-regularly scheduled days. Students are responsible for scheduling make-up visits with their mentors, but do not need to communicate make-up visits with coordinators more than the usual visit reflection required within 24 hours of the end of each visit. (Learn more about visit reflections in WHAT IS A VISIT REFLECTION?)

Absences, whether pre-arranged or unexpected, must be recorded by students online at www.aapfe.org before the visit is to occur. (This informs the coordinators of the absence, so they don’t visit on that day, and it tells the automated notification system to not send reflection reminders for that visit.) Students are also responsible to call or text their mentor to tell them of their absence. If either of these important communications don’t happen, the student will be counseled and reminded of this policy by one of the coordinators. (Find more on this in the WHAT ARE THE STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION RESPONSIBILITIES? section.) Students need not work nor record schedule changes if their regular visit lands within a calendar-recorded school holiday or snow day. Students may, however, choose to arrange with their mentors to work on these days.

Our communication policies are important to the integrity of our program, establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and helping students continue to develop skills they’ll use throughout their lives. As a PFE team—students, parents, mentors, and coordinators—work to communicate using face-to-face interactions, emails, phone calls, texts, www.aapfe.org, greeting cards, and occasional announcements in the eSanjo. All email communications to students from the coordinators are cc’d to parents and notifications from our online system of late visit reflections, etc. are also copied to parents to keep everyone in the loop. There are two basic types of communication required of the student: relational and business.

Relationally, we expect the student to engage in active relationship development with their mentor by smiling, sharing, questioning, listening, giving eye contact, following up, sometimes writing notes or cards, and generally showing interest in their mentor’s likes, dislikes, and needs. When a student is visiting their mentor, their attention should be focused on their mentor for a majority of the two-hour visit.

Required business communication consists of interactions such as talking with the mentor about schedule changes, make-up visits, etc. It also includes communicating with the coordinator through the visit reflections, recording absences online, and answering texts, phone calls or emails from the coordinators in a timely manner. For example, if the student will be unexpectedly absent due to a sickness or major family emergency such as a car accident or emergency hospitalization, the student must call or text their mentor and the coordinator immediately. In another example, it’s possible the mentor is not at their home when the student arrives for their visit. The student should wait at their home ~15 minutes. During that time, the student should call their mentor to seek understanding. If the mentor cannot be reached and does not arrive within 15 minutes, the student should call or text the coordinator. Then they are free to leave. Students must record a mentor-initiated schedule change online and follow up with the mentor later to discuss a time to make up the missed visit. In a final example, when the coordinators give feedback on visit reflections, students should read it and adjust their writing and/or actions accordingly. Each of these examples help keep the coordinator, mentors and students informed, safe, and learning.

We all make mistakes in our communication, so we want to build in a level of grace that will give opportunity for learning and improving. Students will be counseled four times per semester, if needed, regarding communication challenges before they may not be eligible to work for PFE during the upcoming semester. The following are seven communication challenges about which students will be counseled:

1. Ignoring coordinator feedback on visit reflections or other forms of communication; feedback from the mentor of disengaged, non-communicative behavior by the student
2. Any level of dishonesty in verbal or written communications either with mentors or the PFE coordinator
3. Mentor and/or PFE coordinator unaware of circumstances surrounding late arrival/early departure
4. Recording a schedule change for an absence AFTER the beginning of the visit and/or not communicating an absence to the mentor
5. Using pictures in the visit reflection that do not reflect visit-specific service and relationship development. Reusing pictures from previous reflections, submitting two of the same picture or two of the same activity, using pictures from the Internet, uploading pictures that do not include the student’s face in at least one of them or that don’t illustrate what was written in the reflection.
6. Failing to consistently record the correct date or time of visit on a reflection; receiving more than one "Incomplete" for the same reflection. (Learn more about this in WHAT IS A VISIT REFLECTION?)
7. Not responding via phone, text and/or email to inquiries made by the PFE coordinator in a timely manner (within ~24 hours of the inquiry)

A visit reflection is a standardized report the student fills out online at www.aapfe.org. Each reflection is a professional record of the student’s work experience, read by AA’s PFE coordinators as well as representatives from the sponsoring Foundation. They are the main resource referenced to determine if AA is meeting the goals of the program and hence maintaining eligibility for our grant.

It consists of approximately six questions with varying instructions for each question. The student must write and submit a reflection for every visit they have with their mentor—whether they be regularly scheduled or make-up visits. All reflections must be submitted within 24 hours of the end of each visit; however, students are encouraged to accomplish them right away to avoid forgetting to do it. We suggest students devise an individualized system that works and stick to it. For instance, students may start them on their phone in the last 10 minutes of their visit, with their mentor’s permission, and finish them as soon as they arrive home. The only exception to the 24-hour rule is if students work on Friday; then, reflections are due by 5:45pm on the upcoming Sunday, so they are not due on the Sabbath.

Other schools who participate in the Partnering for Eternity program may do it differently, but our student participants log on to www.aapfe.org and select “Submit a New Reflection” from the main menu. Then the student will follow these general steps:

1. Fill in the date of visit, start time, total hours, and type of visit.
2. Answer six separate questions, each with their own instructions and text fields. We are looking for thorough content, grammatically correct and proofread answers.
3. Upload two pictures that reflect visit-specific service and relationship development. Here are some requirements evolved from experience:
   1. DO upload at least one photo each visit that includes your whole, smiling face
   2. DO use pictures that illustrate what you wrote about in the reflection
   3. DO only use pictures that were taken during your visit (not from the Internet)
   4. DO include your mentor in the picture as often as they are willing
   5. DON’T reuse pictures from a previous visit
   6. DON’T upload two identical pictures or two pictures of the same activity
4. Click the “Submit” button or the “Save Progress” button if the student needs to come back to it later to upload pictures or finish writing. It won’t be recorded as a visit until the student has clicked “Submit,” and it has been approved.
   
   Upon clicking “Submit,” the cell phone we have on file for the student receives an immediate text notification letting them know their submission was received successfully. If a student does not receive this notification, there was a problem, and they should contact the coordinator. Also, there is a message on the Web site that lets the student know the reflection was submitted successfully. If a student missed something required, they will be redirected with a message telling them what they forgot to fill out. On rare occasions students may receive an error message that asks them to type in what they were doing at the time they received the error message.
5. The coordinator will review the reflection and approve it or request edits by marking it “Incomplete.” A reflection may be designated as “Incomplete” if the student did not include the requested number of sentences or enough details. If a reflection is incomplete because of rife grammar or proofreading errors, we will make those corrections for the student in our feedback. It will be the student’s job to learn from our feedback and copy/paste our version over their original version. Students have an additional 24 hours to edit their reflection after it has been marked “Incomplete.”
   
   For reflections submitted past the 24-hour deadline, the automated text and email response from the online system will indicate that it is “Late.” All late reflection notifications will be cc’d to parents/guardians. Students are allowed four late reflections per semester, if needed. Students may use these late reflections at their discretion. Submitting more than four late reflections per semester may result in PFE ineligibility during the upcoming semester.

Please email your request to the coordinator at joellea@fullylive.com