Mentors and Tutoring

Contributed by Alyana Andre — Speak Up for Kids Student Intern, an upcoming senior at Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School, passionate about mental health advocacy, literature, and uplifting others through compassion and education.

Overview

Mentors offer a sense of support that provides insight for your everyday life. To many, this is also known as tutoring. Despite its academic connotations, mentors provide more than just scholastic tutoring. Whether this includes (but is not limited to) aspects regarding education, finances, or adulthood, a mentor finds their niche within being readily accessible to helping an individual navigate the confusion of daily life. This article discusses the importance of mentors & tutoring and how we can become more familiar and accepting of this form of cognitive learning.

What Does Mentorship & Tutoring Mean?

For short, it means that you do not have to course through what you do not understand alone! Mentorship & its tutoring is designed to diminish oblivion and ignorance in your livelihood, and nurture a sense of understanding. Tutoring is not strictly limited to a way of teaching. A mentor provides a sense of guidance that is more subjective to an individual and is designed to provide personal solutions. Tutoring can take the form of personal advice from a friend or counseling from a therapist.

Example

Let’s look at mentorship & tutoring through an example; Luke is struggling to understand why he can not get over his social anxiety. Luke’s psychiatrist, Dr. Barnes, informs him of the complexities behind the cognitive process of socialization and, after a careful consultation, recommends deep breaths to help alleviate his anxiety for future occurrences.

In the case of Luke, Dr. Barnes offers a sense of psychological tutoring by helping Luke understand his anxiety and giving him coping mechanisms for future situations where he is overwhelmed by his social anxiety.

Who is Classified as a Mentor?

In regards to tutoring, anyone can be a mentor! A mentor is someone who offers crucial insight to the unknown in times of need. This can be an article, a friend, a teacher, a relative, or yourself if you take the initiative! A mentor upholds the responsibility of guidance & sensibility for an individual, & creates a solution that co-exists with the subjective circumstances, obstacles, and familiar aspects of the individual. Tutoring finds its connotations within teaching because often in our daily life, it is our teachers & professors who offer academic mentorship beyond our own understanding. 

Example

Let’s go back to Luke, in this situation, Dr. Barnes took the responsibility of a mentor by nurturing a familiarity into Luke’s livelihood. He took into account the severe aspects of his anxiety before recommending he take deep breaths. 

There is no entitlement to mentorship. A mentor offers compassion and kindness for a situation where there is none, and never demeans or invalidates any aspects of one’s livelihood. 

When Should I Find a Mentor?

A common misconception is that you need to be struggling in order to find comfort in a mentor, but in reality, it is normal to take refuge in mentorship even when you are not struggling. Oftentimes, tutoring comes to us naturally as we go through our day-to-day lives. As mentioned earlier, there is no entitlement to who is a mentor, so maybe you’ve already found your mentor! And if you haven’t that’s okay as well, as there is no strict deadline or start-date to when you should be mentored.

Example

In the case of Luke, Dr. Barnes goes beyond Luke’s own initiative and offers a sense of psychological tutoring as a means to help him understand himself. Luke did not plan to obtain tutoring from Barnes, nor did he expect it; but the help found Luke naturally once he opened up.

Every individual’s learning process is different, and tutoring may come to some at a slower speed than it does others, and that is completely normal!

Where can I find Mentorship & Tutoring?

You can find mentorship & tutoring in spaces where you can find refuge and vulnerability in. Resources offer mentorship and tutoring using structured questions and discussions. Mentorship & tutoring can even be found within familiar environments, like home or school. Speak Up for Kids is a great example of a mentorship and tutoring resource as it provides insight into the reality of foster youth lives while offering a nurturing body for those in need.

Example

In the case of Luke, he finds himself within a psychological setting for professional insight.

Resources that offer free-cost mentorship as a means to pursue within your career and life include SCORE.ORG & MENTORCITY.COM. 

Why is Mentorship & Tutoring Important?

Mentorship & tutoring finds its significance in the insight and education it offers an individual. With mentoring, an individual is able to envision the solutions to concepts they do not understand or are too fearful to venture into. Mentorship is not just crucial because it teaches, it is crucial because it teaches what one is eager to learn. Mentorship exists to help encourage an individual when they need that encouragement.

Example

Luke gained insight into how to manage his social anxiety because he found curiosity in that aspect of his livelihood.

Through mentorship and tutoring, we are able to gain insight and experiences with one another as a means to grow together.

How are Mentors & Tutoring Beneficial?

Mentors & tutoring bleeds into the recurrences into everyday life. It helps a person progress in their careers, education, and livelihood. Without mentorship, an individual would be stagnant in their knowledge and unable to grow in aspects of their lives. Mentoring is beneficial because it incorporates itself within specific aspects of an individual. 

Example

Mentoring & tutoring benefited Luke by helping him tackle any reoccurrences with social anxiety because he was given the knowledge of how to cope.

Mentorship and tutoring can benefit an individual by bringing out the growth and the strength that has yet to be initiated within an individual.

What Are My Responsibilities as a Mentee?

Now that you have a good idea of what mentorship and tutoring looks like, it is crucial that, as a mentee, you keep an open-mind to what is being communicated and offer a listening ear to what is being told. 

Communication is a crucial aspect in mentorship & tutoring, or any other form of learning. Through communicating, a mentor is able to help address and work through any conflict and offer stable solutions. 

Communication and verbalization are definitive factors because through communication, we are able to express our thoughts, confusions, and understandings. 

Final Thoughts

Mentorship and tutoring play an important role in the growth of one’s life. Mentorship & tutoring are definitive of the mentee themselves. By voicing any conflict and misunderstandings, you become one step closer to navigating through the hardships that come with life.