Mentoring

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