A Mentor's Workshop

In my high school, we had a program called Ignition, which assigns juniors and seniors called mentors to a group of freshmen called mentees to mentor them so that their transition from middle school to high school could be smoother. It is a program that out school is proud of, it was even feature on the Hawaii Deparment of Education Website. Once a month or so, we would meet up and do activities that the advisor told us to do and then ask them reflection questions. The meetings allow them to have a group of people they could get help from if they had no one else. On top of it all, it helps them make friends with people that they might not have met outside of Ignition.

This program is very beneficial for the mentees; however, it is a lot of work for the mentors. Most of the time, because the freshmen are still in that phase where not trying is cool, they will not participate in the activities very well. This often leads to the activities ending early, and the mentors will have to either make conversation with them or try to do something else with them. The mentors often say that conversation making was often always very awkward because the mentees are all shy and trying to act cool, and when they attempt to do something else, they would not know what to do. This problem led me to create a little workshop with the mentors to alleviate the awkwardness that comes after finishing the activities. At the workshop, I would show the mentors’ fun games to get the mentees to engage in the activities. I made a pamphlet filled with fun activities they could refer to when they got stuck and conversational topics I found the mentees’ response to. Many mentors said that having a pamphlet of activities to refer to makes it easier to find things to do rather than think of one on the spot. I hope my workshop helped them get closer to their mentees and made it a little easier for them during their meetings.