GU 299 week 5 Discussion Mentoring and Service-learning

Mentoring and Service-learning

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Institution

Tutor

Course

Date

Mentoring and Service-learning

Despite different ages, qualifications and experiences, mentorship is very important. Through mentorship, people discover their strengths and weaknesses. This gives them an opportunity to focus on the strengths more and identify the strategies they would use to achieve that. It is a good guide for anyone who is trying to make something better out of their lives or work. (Banks, 2010) shares that through mentorship, a student or professional can find a role model, someone they can look up to. A role model is usually someone who has become successful in what he or she does and someone can gain knowledge or skills.

According to (Cullen, 2015), service-learning has given students the opportunity to participate in community involvement. These communities usually involve students to participate in programs. (Jackson, 2015) explains how such give students the opportunity to meet with children or youths in the community and impact their lives positively. Through they experience peer to peer kind of mentoring. As shared by (Banks, 2010), this kind of mentoring helps them establish good communication with other youths enabling them to interact. Personal relationships will also be created giving mentor credibility (Banks, 2010).

During my work as a volunteer, I was able to talk and interact with children who were homeless and some who had runaway from home. This interaction gave me the opportunity to exercise on my mentorship skills. Through this they shared their life’s experiences with me as I shared mine. We were able to build a good relationship and in turn made the mentorship program a success.

I believe that a mentor should have good listening skills and the ability to discern between good and bad. Good listening skills allows a mentor to listen to what the mentee has to say. Good listening involves being keen and taking heed of the content, such that the mentor gets the detail before sharing his or her views. The mentor should also be able to distinguish between what is good and bad. Thus a requirement on critical thinking is essential. Using critical thinking, the mentor can advise the mentees appropriately, giving well thought out ideas or motivation that would be helpful to the mentees.

Reference

A Cullen. (2015), From the chair

D Jackson. (2015), Employability skill development in work-integrated leaning, Barriers and best practice

KH Banks. (2010), A qualitative investigation of mentor experiences in a service learning course