Mentoring

I believe that by talking to people the right way can make them think twice about there choices. For example, giving people advice always helps them make wiser choices. Right now a couple of classmates and I are mentors. We are mentors for freshmen in our Business and Technology Academy in South Gate High School.

Our teacher told us from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be easy task. As a result she was right because they weren’t easy to work with. I had that same idea too but if it meant helping people and making an impact in someone’s life, I was up to that challenge, and much more. They would sometimes act rebellious when ask to listen to us mentors, but for the most part they were easy to work with.

We decided to mentor freshmen because the dropout rate for them upon entering high school is around 47%. Also, because they are starting a new era in their life, and as for us we are already closing it. So we decided to help them with their school work and in much more. I gave my mentees valuable advice and examples of how I was in my freshmen year.

I told them how things were for me. For the most part they listen to me because I told them I messed up really bad and that one day one of my oldest friend made me realize I was messing up and I knew I had to change for good. I straightened up and went to school more and had better grades. By putting myself as an example I hope they took it in consideration.

However, by being in a homeroom of mentors wasn’t just about just talking to the mentees and helping them. We also had assemblies for the academy everything that was going on and things that they needed to know. During the time of the assemblies we had games such as tug o’ war and dodge ball.

As for the potluck activity for our mentors and mentees was fun. We would bring food as snacks and beverages. There we got to know our mentees a little more out of class and so did they got to know us. I thought this activity was entertaining. In this potluck, I’m not going to deny that I brought something because I didn’t. I totally forgot to bring snacks for them. My teacher kind of got upset, but I knew that I had to make up for it and contribute and help out by telling the mentees where to seat down at. When she saw my effort she got happy because she knew I tried and didn’t just bail out.

This whole experience with the mentees gave me a chance to know what it feels like to be a leader. At times it was tough but as a team we overcame that and we made it interesting. From this experience I learned that making a change in someone’s life is a difficult task, but at the end it feels good knowing that we made a change in another persons life and its worth doing it.

From this experience it wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t work as a team. Working together to accomplish a task, always makes things much more easier, but everyone needs to put dedication. This is one of our core values by working together and helping each other. Anyone can say they are going to do something but cant pursue it unless they use dedication to what they are doing. What our class of mentors have is dedication. None of this would have been possible without dedication. From this experience, I learned a lot and had so much fun, and hopefully all our classmates and mentees had fun as well.