Dead Poet's Society: A Mentor Analysis

Introduction
A mentorship is relationship where a mentor helps facilitate a mentee to develop and, eventually achieve, their goals (Jones, & Goble, 2012). This is through the mentor applying their own skills to give guidance and support to the mentee until the mentor is not required, due to the mentees confidence and growth (Zachary & Fischler, 2012). A valuable mentorship follows four stages preparing, occurring before the mentoring has begun, negotiating, which develops the relationship’s ‘ground rules’, Enabling, where goals are set and learning is performed, and closure, which allows for a healthy and prepared conclusion (Zachary & Fischler, 2012). The 1989 film Dead Poets Society explores such a relationship between mentor Mr Keating and mentee Neil Perry, his student (Weir,

Undertaking Mr Keating’s class, Neil discover Mr Keating is an unconventional teacher who encourages and inspires Neil to find meaning in his life and most importantly “carpe diem” (Weir, 1989). Although, when a mentoring relationship like Neil and Mr Keating, has a mentee with a disability the stages must be adapted and personalised in order to accommodate for a range of diverse learning needs (Curryer, Stancliffe & Drew, 2015).
Preparing
The first stage of an effective mentoring relationship is preparation, where the mentor and mentee ensure they have the ability, time, and compatibility to successfully undertake their roles (Zachary & Fischler, 2012). However, this phase is sometimes skipped yet it has been shown that mentoring programs which involve a formal training day produce more positive goal outcomes (Bellon, Gardner, & Riley, 2008). Mr Keating and Neil’s preparing phase can be considered unique as due to being a teacher, Mr Keating may have some formal leadership training (Weir, 1989). Although as the mentorship was formed innately, no formal training for their specific relationship was undertaken (Weir, 1989). Mr Keating’s clear intention was to inspire his students and