 |
Anyone undergoing personal difficulties may feel the need to share these issues with someone. Mentor Link offer this service to young people with the provision of a volunteer mentor and whilst they work within schools, they are independent and non authoritarian adults who are interested in helping. The benefits of mentoring are long term and clear after months rather than weeks, particularly with those pupils who display more challenging behaviour in the classroom. However the rewards are there for Mentor and Mentee alike. Following a recent survey of mentored pupils one young person in Redditch wrote, “Having a mentor has been good and helpful. It has made me think about my future ahead of me and how to get on with other people. I think having a mentor has boosted my confidence and made me think about how other people around me feel. It’s made me feel better about coming to school. My mentor is kind and helpful. She has been very nice and listens to you.” One teacher wrote of a pupil at Ipsley Middle School, “This pupils attendance has greatly improved since seeing her mentor. She also has improved confidence and huge improvement in academic performance, both her tutor and family have seen the positive changes.“ Another mentored pupils writes, “Mentor Link has helped me a lot and many other children in Bewdley. I have a mentor which I go and see every week in school, I go over have a cup of tea and a good chat! My mentor has helped me a lot. My life at home wasn’t very stable and I wasn’t behaving well at school. I was smoking heavily and drinking a lot too. Not coping very well with everything going on around me. My mentor helped me change that all around. Having someone to talk to every week really helps me in fact I can’t think where I would be without it. I don’t drink much anymore and am currently giving up smoking but none of that would have happened without my mentor. I usually spend about an hour with my mentor every week and just talk about everything that’s happened in that week and my mentor gives me coping strategies and helps me deal with my problems and advises me what to do. It helps so many young kids – a lot of them would also be lost without their mentor and there’s many other children that also could do with someone to talk to every week.”
|
