What is Peer Mentoring?

From planning high school classes to preparing for your first semester on campus, having a mentor is one of the best ways to navigate through new and challenging phases of life. Mentoring can be transformational in academic and professional development, especially for underserved youth.

The traditional mentoring structure consists of an established professional, teacher, or member of the community as a mentor who shares their expertise with a younger mentee. It provides a formal arrangement that allows for a mentor, with decades of invaluable experience, to provide guidance based on what they know. But with rapidly evolving high school curriculum, college application requirements, and college campus environments, older mentors may be out of touch with today’s challenges.

What worked for mentors many years ago may not work for the current student today.

Peer to peer mentoring can fill that gap. Unlike traditional mentoring, there is no significant difference in skills between the mentor and the mentee. While this may seem counter-intuitive to the skill-sharing purpose of having a mentor, it’s important to consider the value in building community with peers. Peers often go through similar challenges and have similar interests because they are around the same age. By sharing their learnings, hopes, and concerns with each other, they create feelings of solidarity that can help them navigate through youth together with meaningful interactions. With an equally knowledgeable mentor, both parties are empowered to progress together toward a mutual vision. With a significantly more knowledgeable mentor, the mentee must follow the mentor’s guidance and be led through growth and development.

Common peer to peer mentorship arrangements include pairing older students with incoming students. This way, the older students can give detailed insight about specific subjects that someone who got their diploma many years ago might not know about. Another example of peer to peer mentoring could be high school juniors and seniors paired with college freshmen or sophomores. The new college students have recent experience with applying to and getting ready for college that can be extremely helpful to high school juniors and seniors that are about to start the college application process.

The American Psychological Association (APA) reviewed numerous peer to peer mentoring programs and found that peer mentors are best suited to coach prospective students on how to conduct themselves in a college interview and how to select courses with the most engaging professors. Just like the prospective college student, the enrolled peer mentors have sat through rigorous exams and have experienced almost exactly what the prospective student is going through.

Peer mentors are in the best position to provide the most relevant and applicable study strategies and tips on how to decompress after exams.

Research done by the National Mentoring Resource Center suggests that peer mentoring benefits both the mentor and the mentee. Positive impacts on the mentee include an increase in connectedness at school, an improvement in relationships with teachers and parents, and a boost in their self-esteem. Additionally, another field experiment showed that peer to peer mentorship resulted in increased persistence through academic difficulty for mentees. Simultaneously, the mentor has opportunities for youth leadership and development. In the mentoring role, they learn how to manage their own behavior in interactions with the mentee by using tactics like active listening and conflict resolution.

The less rigid structure of peer to peer mentoring can take on many forms and benefit both the mentor and the mentee. Without all of the formalites, talking to someone around the same age can be more comfortable than talking to an established professional. While having professional interactions is great practice for youth who aspire to work in an office one day, there is a possibility that the mentorship can focus too much on outward presentation and public speaking skills, and not enough on interpersonal and character development.

Without the pressure of having to keep up appearances, youth have an opportunity to be at ease and approach their mentorship in a more easygoing manner. This dynamic creates a more open environment, which can help both parties be more receptive to constructive feedback that will ultimately help them become better people inside out.

We believe that young people supporting one another is crucial in the empowerment of youth. In all of The Blue Heart Foundation’s outings, from college tours to community service, we encourage the boys to look out for each other. We want our boys to be prepared for the unique challenges they are facing in and out of the classroom. This is especially important right now, as they are adapting to distance learning due to COVID-19.

In an effort to help provide support to our students, The Blue Heart Foundation is launching the Alumni Connection Distance Mentoring program. We will be pairing our Blue Heart current high school students with Blue Heart alumni, Kylen Dent, Kaori Andersen, Amir Duke and Djarese Bleveins  to help them navigate the current realities of their academic and personal lives.

We are proud to help create space for youth to support one another during these unusual times. We recognize this is a challenging time for us all. The Blue Heart Foundation is here to help, and we‘re responding in a few ways to keep you and your child safely connected. Read about our response efforts and access to online resources. Check out  our H.E.A.R.T Academy page to learn more about our ongoing programs.