Mentoring Minutes. Robin Cox
Some strategies and tips will be helpful. A message can provide encouragement and important reinforcement of methods they use to build relationships with youth.
•Grandparents are important role models in the lives of young people, though can feel out of touch with the world of youth. These messages fill most of those gaps, and also reinforce the important mentoring role they can undertake in the lives of young people, many of whom turn naturally to the older generation for encouragement, guidance, and a sympathetic ear.
•The book can be used by youth mentoring programs, and other youth organizations as part of their ongoing training. The content can be used for discussion topics when groups of mentees meet during the mentoring experience.
•Schools and education institutions can use the book as a user-friendly resource for staff—including non-teaching staff—who interact with youth each day.
•You can add your own notes on the relevant pages and create a valuable mentoring reference book.
Each week begins with a well-known quote to encourage you to take a moment to reflect on your life, as well as the life of your mentee. Each daily message focuses on an aspect of youth mentoring linked to a weekly theme. The core topics covered are: an outline of the history of mentoring and its relevance in the lives of twenty-first century youth; how to become a great mentor; understanding youth issues; self-image; goal setting; communication; resiliency; and how to positively resolve conflicts.
Many strategies for the development and maintenance of a meaningful relationship with your mentee are offered. Each Mentoring Minute finishes with a “Mentoring tip”—a sentence or two which simply reinforces a key aspect of a quality mentoring relationship, and aims to encourage you, and remind you of your value as a youth mentor.
Mentors can adapt the ideas and thinking behind the messages to their communities, with the understanding that not all strategies and suggestions are applicable to youth mentoring programs offered within different socio-economic areas and cultural groups.
Repetition of content
There is repetition throughout the Mentoring Minutes messages. This is deliberate. Repetition is important if a mentoring relationship is to become meaningful and worthy of the time invested in it by the mentor and the mentee.
Repetition is also necessary because every relationship is unique and moves at a different pace for a variety of reasons which are explained in the Mentoring Minutes messages. These messages and the “Mentoring moments” take account of this reality.
A tribute to my mentor
Who were the most important and positive adults during your adolescence other than your parents—not the case in every young person’s upbringing? Can you think of the most significant adult? Someone who took on a mentoring role as advocated by mentoring expert Dr. Susan Weinberger5:
Mentors need to show their mentees that they really care about them. This can be accomplished when a mentor is there for a mentee, serves as their number one advocate, is a good listener, provides consistency and commitment to the relationship and is a friend, confidant, and nurturer. What is the most important role of a mentor? Be a good listener. I always say in my trainings: ‘We have two ears and one mouth so listen twice as much as you talk.’
Anthony Mallett was my high school principal. He was my cricket coach when I was fifteen years of age. I was a student leader in his leadership team when I was seventeen, and then school captain (head student) in my final year of school. Anthony became my mentor during this particular season of my life.
Later, I spent two years as a student tutor at my old school while I completed my teaching degree, so Anthony and I had many opportunities to chat when our paths crossed. I also taught for two years at the school under Anthony’s leadership.
Anthony was a superb teacher, brilliant sportsman and coach, a leader of some repute, and an exceptional actor. I will never forget the small role I had in a staff play when I was on stage with him—a laugh a minute for the audience and Anthony, certainly not for me!
Anthony coached me how to think and strategize as a cricket captain, never to give up, and always play to win within the spirit of the game. He did not like to lose, yet modeled how to be gracious in defeat.
Anthony coached me to be true to myself, to have the courage of my convictions, to listen carefully to all sides of an argument, to stand tall in the face of adversity, never to fear respectfully sharing my thoughts and opinions with others, and to be a servant leader. He also coached me the importance of being teachable, to laugh often, and never to take life too seriously.
My final handwritten school report from Anthony has motivated and inspired me more times than I can remember. He saw something in me that I still sometimes struggle to see in myself. His comments continue to remind me never to accept a second-best effort, as well as the power of the written word, and the lifelong impact positive words can have.
Robin’s outstanding contribution to the school deserves the highest praise: he is a young man of deep sensitivity coupled with a tenacity of purpose that will make him a really able person. He has led his school by sheer example and personality; he has learnt to view situations broadly and to have his advice discarded in favor of the wider perspective. I shall miss him as a friend, and the school will miss him as a leader of considerable stature. Good luck—but not goodbye!
I became a school principal of a school in Cape Town situated less than ten minutes from Anthony’s retirement home. He had taught at the school for a brief time after retiring as a school principal.
I will never forget a cold wintry afternoon when I was working late. Anthony must have seen the light on in my office. He often used to walk around the school grounds. A short, sharp knock on the door, and Anthony popped his head in. For the next half-an-hour or more he sat on the edge of my desk, and we chatted about education and life—the mentor and the mentee who now sat in the principal’s chair.
My intention was to ask Anthony to mentor me in the months ahead. He was trustworthy, had a sharp mind, enjoyed a challenging conversation, and had much experience and wisdom to share. Sadly, soon after that visit Anthony’s cancer gained a firm foothold on his body, and he died a few months later.
I know how proud he was to see one of his former students eventually become a school principal—now I pass on the legacy, as I echo the powerful words of business executive Lenny Springs6:
We are still being mentored. If you look at each of us [in this organization], someone in our lives recognized us, told us that we could achieve and be somebody. Success doesn’t just happen. It’s not the luck of the draw. We are all standing on other people’s shoulders. And I can’t forget that. I won’t forget it. That’s why I give back, because someone paved the way for me.
Have you thought about whose shoulders you are standing on? Perhaps you have, and that is why you picked up this book.
I hope you enjoy and gain inspiration and encouragement from the Mentoring Minutes messages, and will continue to remind yourself—through the highs and lows of your relationship with your mentee—that every adolescent is a unique person with specific strengths, gifts, and talents that need to be nurtured and supported.
Thank you to all the amazing mentors within our global community who become the light in the darkness of others and, through their example, model the spirit of mentoring.
Mentoring Minutes
Week 1 to Week 52
When a fractured leg is healed
it must walk again;
when a damaged zipper is mended
it must zip again;
when a sagging gate is fixed
it must swing again,
and when a broken heart is mended
it must give again.
—Author unknown