Mentoring

I started mentoring about 4 months ago. I thought that I would be signing up for a program where have a one-on-one relationship and can help guide a kid through life. The program I signed up for is so short of male volunteers that I got 4 mentees. I have to figure out what to do with 4 high school kids now. I had these grand dreams of grooming and instilling my wisdom on one child with a lot of one-on-one time. Well that just won’t work out for 4 kids because I don’t have that much free time. Even after finding out the large ratio I decided to commit to the one year program.

I am to spend a minimum of one session a month with the kids and help them with the Capstone project.
The program is supposed to teach the kids a variety of life skills including money management (saving) and career selection. The first session was just to see who would actually showed up. I got 3 random kids that would not end up being my mentees. We talked about hopes, dreams and what they wanted to do with their lives. It was fascinating talking to them because I could hear an echo of my thoughts through these kids. I could hear myself thinking the exact same thoughts when I was their age. Then life beat many of those thoughts out of my head. I asked all of them how many hours they wanted to work each day; all three of them said 14-16 hours a day. You get the idea of what kind of answers I would get the rest of the evening.

The third session was on Election Day November 4th. The mentees asked me whom I voted for and I explained to them that it is a secret ballot and choose not to tell them. Not wanting to cut off the lines of communication I did explain to them how I selected my candidate. I explained to them that it was the selection of the lesser of two evils. All candidates are trying to get votes at election time, so the promises are always to make people happy and upset as few people as possible. The two presidential candidates had huge spending plans and did not do a sufficient job of explaining where the money was coming from. I explained that it is a zero sum game, the money has to come from somewhere and that would upset some group of voters so candidates spent very little time identifying the funding. The mentees are 10 graders studying civics in school and heavily supportive of Obama. One of them sits up proudly and says he knows where Obama will be getting the money. I encourage him to tell the group. He says that Obama will tax big business. So I ask him “Is this a good idea?” I can tell by the body language of the mentees that they seemed to be very eager to agree with this source of funding. The surface level thinking is “Sure it doesn’t come out of my pocket”. I tell them that big business is not a bottomless pit and that companies must make a profit. I ask them what happens if the company can no longer make a profit? Are there other countries that have lower taxes? I asked them what happens if a company decides that they should no longer be based in the US? I noticed a definitely deflated body language. I asked “Do you think it is a good idea to increase taxes on business?” Not expecting an answer I help them understand that we can not spend more than we make or else we end up in very heavy debt, like the country is in right now.

Even though I am not able to mold one disciple into thinking the way I do, perhaps I still can do some good to a larger group. The effect may not be quite as deep on any one child, but maybe it will be enough to guide them through life.