53. The joys and pains of adolescence

An interesting couple of weeks.

Our new program is up and running and most of the matches seem to have taken off incredibly quickly and well. The beauty of being involved in youth mentoring programs is their unpredictability! I have had a few splutters trying to get the Student Online Performer completed, but I hope to have that done next week. I would prefer it completed before the mentoring relationship is too far down the road, as that gives a better idea of where the students are at when they begin the journey.

There have been some wonderful developments. One student, who was ready to leave school a few months ago, is now absolutely convinced that she needs to complete her final two years of schooling and seems pretty motivated to do so. Her mentor arranged for her to meet another mentor who works at a local tertiary education institution. This visit was a great success and the student commented that she did not know how many options there were for her until that day. Another heads off with her student to visit a small business in the area tomorrow. Yet another took his mentee to visit a few small businesses a couple of weeks ago. The student is now more motivated to move forward with his career planning and is going to ask one of the people he visited if he can have a week of work experience there.

On the flipside of the coin is the reality that students are still adolescents, have all the mood swings etc. etc. One student has spent far too much time away from school. This has hampered the mentoring relationship. The mentor helped arrange a work experience for the student. The student attended two of the four days and that about sums up where this youngster is at. Perhaps, though, the student realised that she was not cut out for that particular profession.

Mentors continually need to be reminded that the students are adolescents and their behaviour patterns are unlikely to change after one 'chat' with their mentor. I will send out a reminder about this when I email all the mentors tomorrow. I fear some mentors beat themselves up because they don't feel they are achieving enough fast enough, or they expect their mentee to change behaviour patterns, forgetting the huge peer pressure and so on. Over and over again I see my role as reminding the mentors that they are seed sowers - patience, patience, patience!

Over and above all this, I am becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of role modelling in far too many families. Parenting skills are woefully lacking ............ then, again, that's also a generalisation.

52. Mentors and the danger of high expectations

In recent weeks I have had a number of discussions with mentors who have expressed disappointment that their mentees might not have completed a relatively easy task they agreed to see completed when last they met.

During the training I suggest to mentors that they have no expectations of their mentees. Then they will not be disappointed! Most of these students are lacking self-confidence and genuinely believe that they can't achieve much with their lives. This is because of the messages they might have been receiving from parents, peers and teachers. Perhaps it is because they might have a sibling who appears to do well at school, in sport or in some other area and they spend time comparing themselves to this sibling. There are many reasons for these situations, the most common one that I have come across being a mentee living in an unstable, insecure environment.

Anyway, it's been a good time to remind mentors not to have these unreal expectations and rather to use their mentoring sessions to do all the things they and their mentees want to do. While they might not achieve as much in the time available, they might decide to continue meeting one another at the end of the formal program and thus they have some strong foundations on which to build the next leg of their journey. If they quietly persevere, there is a very good chance the young person's self-esteem will be on the rise and then anything becomes possible.

Mentors continue to underestimate the positive effect their weekly appearances for these mentoring sessiomns have on their mentees ie, a volunteer adult consistently turning up week after week to encourage them to reach their potential.

A couple of mentors have organised visits to local businesses or a local tertiary training institution during the past couple of weeks and they are already beginning to see the positives from these excursions.

The beauty of mentoring is that it is so unpredictable!

51. New matching, interesting progress

A busy week last week. On Tuesday the new group of mentors attended the matching session with the new group of students. There is a lot of flu going around at the moment, so it was not really a surprise that a couple of students were away from school. Then one of the students arrived with a friend. The friend wanted to participate, but did not really know much about the program. Unfortunately the School Coordinator was away at another function, so I had some quick decision-making to do. Another girl had arrived as well and insisted that she was supposed to be there. Her name was not on the list! A mentor from the previous program at the school, who also taught part-time there, came to my rescue. She looked for students who had not arrived. A couple of students said they no longer wanted to participate in the program - they have no idea of the opportunity they will be missing, but we don't want students to participate if they are not keen to do so. Eventually we got under way and I allowed the new students to stay. It was good having two mentors from the previous program participating in this program.

We had plenty of laughter and fun even though I had to condense the program because of the late start. Both mentors and students made their confidential choices at the end and I am processing these at the moment. I am still waiting for the school to inform me as to which students who were away that day will remain in the program. With the matching due to take place on Tuesday, I have little time to get things organised. Hopefully, things will come together.

What have I learnt?

Probably the key points which I will take into future matchings will involve having more students present than mentors and all the paperwork from the students completed and handed in to the School Coordinator. This latter point has been an ongoing issue in all our programs and one we do need to get on top of. Also, it's crucial that the School Coordinator is present.

The two other programs had many highs! Mentors are beginning to arrange visits to local businesses and to the local tertiary institutions their mentees are interested in attending. Another mentor is assisting her mentee, who is working through some difficult issues at the moment, to find work experience for a week, just testing the water with regard to future career possibilities. Another mentee told me that she is now going to stay at school next year. A couple of months ago she was adamant that she was going to leave.

These are a few of the positives from the week gone by. There are more. As the connection between mentor and mentee is firmed up, so there is movement in the type of activities the mentors are beginning to get involved in with their mentees.

50. 'GR8 MATES ROX!'

Thus wrote a student participating in the GR8 MATES program when the first surveys of our second and third programs were carried out earlier this week. How positive is that!

While there have been a few wobbles as a result of transient students, the programs are settling down and becoming very positive in all respects. Last week the mentors from one of the programs accompanied their mentees to a local Nepean Careers Market where they had the opportunity to visit a variety of stalls covering many possible careers, places of further study, Apprenticeship opportunities and so on. Approximately 6,600 students pass through this event over two days and it is easy for students to waste the time or to feel overwhelmed. Another mentor has assisted a student with the development of a career plan, offering extra time to take the student to a friend of hers who works in this field. On Wednesday night another mentor accompanied her mentee to the student's 2009 subject selection evening at the school and, judging from the emails that have been exchanged since then, this has further cemented the mentoring relationship. Another mentor is planning to introduce her menteee to a high profile sporting organisation towards the end of August if the mentee meets all his school commitments and so I could go on.

12 mentors are preparing for a matching session with students at the local High School where we concluded our first mentoring program recently. This promises to be an interesting occasion.

I shared some points with our mentors earlier today:

· Get out and about. Go for a walk and talk, rather than just settle in a chair and don’t move ie. bring variation into the mentoring meetings. If you move around a bit, this gets the oxygen flowing to the brain and the focus of the student will be consistently good!
· Use the computers for researching, checking emails etc.
· If you are sitting at a table, sit next to one another rather than across from one another. This leads to better communication, you can observe body language etc.
· Preferably sit some way apart from another mentoring pair so you can chat without being overheard.

Small things are being achieved as the program gets under way in these schools. The program only has another 10 weeks to run and it will be interesting to compare the evaluations at the end of the two current programs with those of the first program that took place over 10 months.