What if I say the wrong thing? What if I can’t get him to open up? Hell, what if he won’t even respond to me? What if he doesn’t like me or won’t answer my calls? That’s what I feel like when I start with every new mentee, and I have done mentoring of some sort for decades.
This isn’t easy. It is certainly rewarding as the kids relate to you, call you, and look forward to talking with you…but there is no guarantee that will happen or continue. Then it is over. If we don’t know how it all worked out. It leaves an empty feeling.
Thus far as part of my current mentoring endeavor, I’ve only had three mentees. The first went very well as we connected on several different levels, including football, which he played, and I coached. The second became a no show on my third week with him, and the third was a nice kid who whiled away his time game playing on his phone.
He was a good kid. His biggest problem was that he had moved and was not registered for school for months. He was only with me because his older brother had a mandated mentor, and his mom insisted young bro had one as well. I felt good about our connection. I even learned to play a video game he suggested, and I was going to tech him chess in person. We just couldn’t find a place and it was too late. His time with me was up.
To make a long story short, it turns out I kept pushing for someone to figure out what was going on and to get him registered for school. I promised him that once he was in school, I would mentor him about how to learn to learn, study, and organize. I guess something I did with him clicked because he reconnected with his old school’s online registration system to see his records as I had suggested. It turns out that he was never unregistered from his previous school, so no one followed up in his new school to register him. No one knew, not even his social worker. He was ignored like so many so-called truant kids during covid.
Then, just as good news was beginning to happen, as his social worker was about to work this out with his mom, his sessions with me ended. I tried to reach him, but the tangle of who has what phone and who can reach him was always a problem even when it was mandated. When it was no longer mandated, it became impossible, so I just gave up trying after three attempts.
I have no idea what happened to him. I never got the chance to help him the best way I know how. I assume he was eventually registered, but what classes he was registered for and what grades he may receive for the year are still unknown to me. Will he be promoted? Who knows?
I asked once and it was to no avail. It was a rather disappointing result to what could have been a wonderful mentoring experience. Maybe he feels better about himself for it. I hope so.
So, if you mentor, stay balanced. Stay objective. Don’t think you, like Mighty Mouse, will always come to save the day. Often we can help our mentees save their days, but we must know we are not the answer. We are only the guide.
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