Mentoring
Over the course of three months, LoveLife Generation worked
closely with around twenty students, including myself, with the prospect of
employing us with peer mentoring skills and actually mentoring Year 7s at
Kingsford Community School.
We first underwent weekly sessions facilitated by Jasmine and
Rukiyah whereby we were taught how to approach our mentee, exploring official
introductions, the setting of boundaries, and allowing our mentee to work
through to their own solution with the use of variety of question styles when
appropriate, including; open, closed, probing and hypothetical questions. Once
our training as mentors had been completed, we were ready to move onto
mentoring younger children at Kingsford Community School, an opportunity that
seemed both incredibly daunting yet exhilarating.
As a mentor, we had to adapt to real time situations; what if
our mentee is introverted? What if our mentee says something that endangers
someone? What if our mentee refuses to talk? Despite having been trained prior,
it was a completely new experience when we physically sat down with our
mentees. However, as the weeks progressed, we eventually managed to build bonds
with our mentees, so much so that the mentees wanted to meet more often, which
made the enthusiasm involved the most enjoyable aspect for me. Before each
session, it felt refreshing to see that my peers, as well as our respective
mentees, grew in joy through each session, shown through the finding that many
of our mentees had grown a sense of independence and felt confident in their
abilities to improve.
Sadly, due to exams approaching, we were not able to continue
the sessions over an extended period of time, but in the time we experienced
mentoring, we were able to build the confidence of our mentees sure enough to
suffice further than our weekly meetings.
Overall, the experience of mentoring was equally fulfilling
as it was eye-opening, as we were able to experience new outlooks towards
handling situations.
– By Reiss Akhtar
.JPG)
