Mentoring is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Mentors are facilitators or teachers allowing the protégé to discover their route. 

 

Think back. Did you know how to study for a test or make plans for college? 

 

Do you remember looking for a part-time job?  

 

What kind of career to pursue, the competencies needed and your drawbacks? 

 

Simple things that seem easy today may appear to be an absolute inscrutability to a young budding person. 

 

These questions keep hovering around in the minds of young students as they are befuddled what are their career goals, they are pulled down by huge financial and family problems, having no guidance on the path to embark upon. 

 

They are often misguided having no choices or preferences, settling for less than expected.

Ideal mentor

Mentoring is a tool to ensure that young latent potential is channelized in right direction. 

 

A mentor is one whom they can trust and look upto. Mentoring helps improve a students’ self-esteem because it guarantees a young person that there is someone who cares about them geared up to foster their energy on a constructive track. 

 

The student feels he/she is not alone in dealing with day-to-day challenges poised on personal and professional front. 

 

Mentoring provides students with an experienced friend who is there to help in any number of situations. 

 

Through this, mentoring supports the education system by making the students fond of the college.

 

Students who meet regularly with their mentors are less likely than their peers to miss out a day at college and less likely to skip a class. 

 

Mentors help with homework and can improve their mentees’ academic skills. Mentors teach young people how to relate well to all kinds of people and help them fortify communication skills. 

 

Mentors help young people locate career goals , meet industry professionals, find internships and trace job possibilities and take steps to realize them, learn how to seek and keep jobs.

As a mentor working one–on-one with a student, you will help your student prepare for the transition from college life to workplace. 

 

You will also construct your own coaching, communication and leadership skills. 

 

Mentoring relationships present better students attitudes and behaviours in college and students are more likely to attend classes regularly.

Critical areas 

Some of the critical areas where students can be mentored are:

Teen to adult transition

Substance abuse, criminal behaviors

Lack of self-esteem and complexes

Attitude Problems

Poor academic performance and declining grades

Chronic absenteeism

Discipline problems at college

Low educational expectations/Lack of plans for career

Disinterest in extracurricular activities

Balancing stress and managing relationships

Development of soft skills

Preparation for exams

 

There are also copious peripheral risk factors for indiscipline, such as gender inequality, poor socio-economic status, echelon of parental education, involvement with child welfare services, living in a single parent home and a home with recurrent discords. 

 

Given that the more risk factors a student faces the more likely he/she is to malfunction at college, we can extrapolate that interventions aimed at tumbling and removing these alterable risk factors will be more successful at preventing students from taking extreme steps.

 

Mentoring by a considerate adult over a prolonged period of time can be effectual in skirmishing these risk factors. 

The mentoring process has a tremendous power whereby learners get self-driven and the mentor receives personal satisfaction in developing a better individual. 

 

The teachers are the best guides to their students and through this process the competencies of student can be channelized for success. 

 

Students prefer to join colleges where their teachers are accommodating and provide legroom for their development. 

It’s this bond between the teachers and students that acts as an obligatory force leading to unswerving individuals.