What is mentoring?
Mentoring tends to focus on the future. It is intended for personal and/or career development. Mentoring relationships is a relationship that tend to be voluntary on both sides. This is a lot different from coaching mentor, who is usually paid for it.
The mentor is someone who wishes to pass on their experience to someone else who will benefit from it. The four key element of mentoring can be resume as such: improving performance, career development, counselling and sharing knowledge.
According to David Clutterbuck, a well-known management writer, developed an acronym for what mentors do:
Manage the relationship
Encourage
Nurture
Teach
Offer mutual respect
Respond to the learner’s needs
What is a natural mentor?
Fundamentally, mentors make people feel important. Natural mentorships are relationships that form between youth and older individuals within their existing communities. Natural mentorship relationships may be more easily implementable than formalized mentorships. Teachers, coaches, friends, and other adults can often be natural mentors.
Connections between youth and the mentor can have a positive outcomes for youth. Van Dam et al.’s research suggest that natural mentors:
- Enhance a sense of belonging,
- Serve as an informational resource, giving advice on school and job-related issues, and
- Provide emotional support.
Why students have a mentor?
Having a mentor can impact the course of students’ academic and personal life trajectories. The benefits are several.
First, they get to have an individualized goal setting. They can assess their progress and their work. They can also set goals, plan strategies etc. This interaction helps students develop a universal set of skills that are necessary for success in college, career, and life.
Afterward, having a mentor allows students to build a relationship built on trust.
Mentors serve as a thought partner for students on their academic journey and help empower students to become great learners.
They support students’ aspirations and fears, and act as an advocate for students’ best interests.
Bibliography:
https://www.nextgenlearning.org/articles/why-every-student-should-have-a-mentor-and-every-teacher-should-be-one