Become a Mentor or Tutor

If you become a mentor or tutor, you will answer an important question: are you someone with the power to help others? Of course you are! Every time you gain a new skill or a new insight, you now have something of value to others. The value of the gifts you have is for others as much as it is for you. If you were a genius guitar player and could make incredible music, that would clearly be a gift you could enjoy, but the bigger value would come when you shared this gift with others and made their lives more beautiful and happy. Our talents are meant to be shared.

This challenge might lead you to tutor someone in an academic topic, or to mentor a younger person who needs a buddy. Either way, your work makes your community better: the more we help each other and share skills, the smarter and stronger we all become. If every person was always teaching and mentoring, and always being taught and mentored, we would keep growing and growing. As a side benefit, doing this will give you greater confidence, a new and positive relationship, and an awareness of how to learn, which makes you more capable in learning new things. This is a positive cycle if ever there was one.

Getting Started: If you aren’t sure you know how to teach or help others, start with someone several years younger than you and it will quickly become clear. You could help someone read, or play ball with a kid who is feeling isolated. You could coach someone in a sport you know well, or help with math homework that comes easily to you but challenges someone else. Here are some specific ways to find these opportunities:

Decide if you would rather be a mentor or a tutor to start. Sometimes the two go together, but it can help to focus on one first. Choose tutoring if you would like to help someone with an academic topic. Choose mentoring if you would like to be a friend, guide, and good listener to a younger student.
See if you already know someone you could help. Once you decide if you want to focus on mentoring or tutoring, see if there might be someone in your extended family — say, a cousin — or in a friend’s family, like the younger sibling of a friend — who needs help. Or maybe your school matches you with a buddy in an earlier grade, or if you are part of a religious group or another association, there may be a “buddy” component to that already. If you don’t have this, don’t worry, and go on to step 3.
Let the right adults know you’re available to help. If someone doesn’t come to mind who could use your help as a mentor or tutor, let several adults know that you’re available so that they can look out for opportunities. For example: your teachers and counselors at school; anyone involved in after-school programs; people in your community who work with youth programs (like Boys & Girls Clubs), youth centers or community centers; and daycares and preschools which may be interested in having older kids come to read to or help their students. If you’re exploring this challenge during quarantine, remember that tutoring and mentoring can still take place via video calls, at least for kids of elementary school age and older.

Just as there are probably mentors and tutors for you all around you, whether they know it or not, there are many people you could help with your skills and attention.