REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Reflective Essay



Reflective Essay

In this essay it relates to the reflection of practical experiences that is gained while mentoring undertaken at Marsden Heights. We need to discuss the methodology that was applied during the period of mentoring and the stages of progression with facilitation of the programs for analyzing the personal development. Thus, Mentoring is an interpersonal relationship support, exchange and learning, in which an experienced person invests his accumulated wisdom and expertise to promote the development of another person who has the skills to acquire and objectives professionals to achieve.

As a part of module mentoring in the community, we have to undertake a placement of about 30 hours of voluntary work experience in the community. Our sessions of mentoring were chosen to be done at Marsden Heights in Pendle, being a mixed community college with the ages between 11 -16.

This place was chosen in the year 2012 of Oct and we were handed over the lecturer Ridwaanah Gurjee in order to sort out the placement. Thus, after having an initial meeting with our supervisor Mashaq Hussain, being the head of the youth side at the school. He showed us the school and also introduced us to other colleagues. We had a discussion about school and he also mentioned regarding the age group we would be mentoring and working with. Mr. Mashaq also advised us to bring in our copies and CRB checks with our passports for the ID purpose. Thus, on the same day we were also informed regarding the pack of volunteering staff. We had to sign a lot of papers as the schools too had a strict policy for following as to who can and cannot work with the children, this could be the reason that it has taken us since October to get much involved in school activities.

I preserved and waited for their response and also was hoping to get in touch them, as I personally did not wanted to get my experience of work anywhere else, the reason was that I wanted to work with the younger children. I always believe that being the mother of two children, I can communicate well with those age group children, and second reason was my interest towards learning and getting involved in them.

In my opinion, in mentoring, we put much of our efforts into separating out the “wrong” (in intentions, availability or attitude) potential volunteers from the “right” ones. We take our obligation to shield youth from harm that could come through our programs very seriously and make every attempt to reduce the risks that being involved in mentoring could pose to them, through the relationships that are built or the activities that mentors engage in (Kamvounias, 2008, 17-25). While we try to control as many of the risks that might stem from our programs as possible, we cannot ignore risks that we have no control over conditions in the rest of a child's world (DuBois, 2006, ...