Mentoring Makes a Difference

I mentor a student at Vance Middle and we first met the last week in February. When we intially met he came across as very mannerable but education was not very high on his priority list. That may have come from his parents, friends, teachers, or community but I felt it was my job to change his perception. Just for the sake of this post, I will talk about our last two visits before school ended.

In the next to last visit, I wanted to find out how he felt about the time we spent together. He said he like how I mixed it up (meaning I did not just meet with him at the same place each week). For some reason, he thought that I could not play ball so I had to break his ankles with my crossover a couple of times. Also I visited him during lunch, sat in on classes, and visited his teachers.

Then I asked him what he was going to do for the summer. He said that he was going to summer school. So I asked him did his mom enroll him or did the school? He said that he asked to be enroll so that he can catch up in school:)

On our last visit, I was speeding from my daughter's Preschool/College graduation (It lasted 3 hours) to see him before school let out for the summer. I got to the school at 1:40 pm and the principal said that the students got out early. So I walked across the street to get a snowcone and while doing that I saw one of his classmates. I asked his classmate to get him.

My mentee came out and I asked him and his friend did they want something to eat. They both ordered nachos with peppers. So we all sat a talked about girls (that will be another blog), sports, and school. During our conversation, my mentee spots one of his teachers and tells his friend to come on. When they got finished talking to his teacher, they came back.

I asked them what they were doing. My mentee said that he was trying to find out if his friend could go to summer school with him so he can catch up too!

Moral of the story: If you have a spare hour every week, see if you can mentor someone. All of our youth are great, they just need someone to love and help guide them through life. Remember our children can be a lot of great things, but "they can't be, what they can't see".