Yesterday I received an email from a mentor of a young student in a GR8 MATES mentoring program I was involved with. Gail (not her real name) had been Garth's (not his real name) mentor for six months about 18 months ago. This was during a low period of Garth's life, a time when he was suspended from school and there were many stories floating around about his antisocial behaviour. He missed an occasional mentoring session and, it would be true to say, he was even a reluctant participant initially.
However, Gail showed the unconditional, non-judgmental love required of an effective mentor. As the Program Coordinator, I stayed in the background, yet was able to support Gail when she felt she was hitting her head against a brick wall. I could see small changes occurring in Garth, from his attitude, to his body language, to the fact that he was almost the first student arriving each week to the mentoring program.
Gail helped Garth to see through windows of opportunity which he simply had blinded himself to. She stuck by him, was always firm and fair, sent him emails of encouragement even if he did not always respond and allowed him to move at his own pace.
At the final function of the formal part of the mentoring program, Garth surprised everyone with the testament he presented on the impact that Gail had had on his life.
Yesterday's email from Gail was to tell me that Garth had been elected to a top leadership position in his school for 2010 and that he was talking seriously of becoming a primary school teacher, specifically focusing on children with disabilities.
While Garth has a long way to go on that journey, yet another story of what is posssible in situations where many adults and teachers fail to see the potential in a young person or they just become understandably exhausted from trying to encourage a young person to be the best they can become :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment