Peer Mentoring for Teenagers

What is peer mentoring? In schools across the country, peer mentoring is used as a way to help young people do better scholastically, get along better with others, and adjust to school. According to studies, before listening to adults, young people tend to listen to other young people.

Most schools are implementing peer mentoring for students for a number of different reasons. Mentoring is not to be confused with tutoring. Tutoring only relates to scholastic endeavors. Mentoring encompasses social as well as academic progress.

Fighting in schools is a problem that is not likely to end. Fighting happens all of the time in schools and administrators are often at a loss as to how to handle these problems. Fighting is hardly new, but is something that schools do not want to tolerate.

Suspending students who fight does not work. In some cases, it exacerbates the problem even further. While school administrators do have to enforce discipline and punish those who break rules in order to accomplish this, but simply letting it go at discipline. Most schools seek to try to solve the problem through peer mentoring.

Peer mentoring enables young people who are at odds with one another to get together with other teens and tell their side of the story. Each person who is involved in the altercation is allowed to discuss their perspective of what happened. The peer mentoring group then gives their advice on how to mend the problem. Peer mentoring has proven to be very effective with regard to problems with fighting in school.

Other peer mentoring programs help students adjust to school. This is used in all different school levels throughout the United States. In grammar school, young Kindergarten students are often given an older student as a mentor who helps them read and get adjusted to school. The peer mentoring students are usually only a bit older than the Kindergarten students. Not only do the young children benefit from being mentored by the older students, but the older children also benefit by being entrusted with the care of the young Kindergarten students.

Peer mentoring can work with any problem a student has in school. Many schools have peer mentoring clubs where students are trained to mentor others with problems by school counselors. The students do not act as counselors but simply mentor those who need help in school. They are also taught when to bring problems to an adult.

Whether high school, junior high school, or grammar school, most schools today are developing some sort of peer mentoring program. Rather than listening to an adult supervisor, young people are more inclined to listen to one of their own. Peer mentoring can work with students who are a bit older than one another, or with students who are the same age as each other. In schools, the peer mentoring concept is for young people to help one another overcome adversity and difficulties in their schools lives, and even learn how to fit into school and make friends.

Leave a comment | View Comments