Olmedo 1

Ian Olmedo

English 1302-208

Dr. Kevin Lindberg

11 April 2024

Utilizing the Benefits of a Mentor Program v. Further Education

Composing artifacts that would sway their readers to the side of following a mentor

program instead of obtaining further education to choose the most reliable path for me. While I

aspire to own a major business and deal with workers and clients, I want to ensure that I am

prepared for what life has to face. With success stories of people favoring mentors over teachers

these stories can lead someone to failure. Is it better to learn from a mentor than a teacher?

While weighing personal experience against these articles, they claim a mentor can lead

to reduced stress, help build a positive mindset, and help create relationships with people. While

these can be signs of a mentor leading a mentee on a path to follow, a teacher's job is to prepare

their students to succeed on their own by considering the situation. This allows students to

handle a decision on their own by assessing the matter at hand. “Benefits of Mentoring for

Young People” by the US Government states that mentoring is an easy way to ensure that the

youth stays on a path to success instead of falling into the temptation of drugs and alcohol. These

claims are supported by statistical data showing that a mentor can help guide students away from

the streets. Teachers who can possess these same qualities are much more accessible than having

to go out and scout for a good mentor.

A close bond between a teacher with their students can prevent them from making bad

decisions that can change their life. For example, simple things such as starting clubs that

students will participate in. Clubs can create endless bonds and wise moments with a teacher.
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Activities and clubs such as Raymond Nelson’s “Gentlemens Club” taught students from a

low-income area with no father figure how to be gentlemen. Nelson went above and beyond by

creating relationships with these students, showing them how to dress professionally, treat

women with respect, and make changes to the world one student at a time. Teachers like Nelson

combat the negative point of view that the sources composed for this article try to portray.

Teachers will always be there to guide students to success.

Goals are in place to track and maintain progress to being successful. “The lifelong

benefits of mentoring,” by Brendan Smith, claims that having a mentor will allow for an easier

transition from student life to adult life. Smith describes why a mentor can help, “A peer mentor

is just a few steps ahead of you, so they have a good idea of where the potholes and land mines

are.” Smith mentions how a mentor's guidance can prepare a mentee for what is to come and

how a mentee can surpass a specific scenario. Expressing how a mentor can give an easy path to

success and prevent many mistakes that an up-and-coming mentee may travers.

From personal experience, I have come across many great teachers who prepared me for

my changes in college and the workforce. Programs such as accelerated learning give students

the privilege to gain extra knowledge of the real world from the comfort of a classroom.

Programs like Early College and Designated Magnet programs allow students to get a jumpstart

on their careers. Teachers these programs allow students to get a feel for the career of their

choice; additionally, teachers are supervising students step by step. These higher level classes

allow students to mess up and fail without serious repercussions or any financial commitment.

This allows for students to dabble in many more subjects than possible paying out of pocket for

college.
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A growing mind is a mind that asks questions, with questions needing an answer. Parina

Parmar’s article, “5 Differences Between Mentoring and Teaching,” highlights how a mentor is

much more accessible than a teacher. Parmar mentions that a mentee can contact their mentor at

any time no matter if it is night or day; however, Parmar mentions that mentors are superior by

her stance because it may be unprofessional to email a professor late at night. Additional

mentions about how a mentor will educate a mentee for the love in their career while teachers

teach because they get paid to.

These two statements alone can be easily brought down with the relations that students in

higher level classes in college will grow to their professors. As one progresses down their

educational journey the classes will become smaller, there will be less students in a classroom

making the teacher to student ratio minimal. There are a lot of students who will contact a

professor late at night. This can be because there was a question on an assignment or even

because the class takes place at 8p.m.. While these times may be late it is not unprofessional to

email a professor later in the day, especially if it has any relation with the class or with the

subject. Parmar’s second statement that teachers only teach because they are getting paid to do so

can not be further from the truth. While there may be a handful of teachers that fall into that

category, everyone knows teachers do not get paid enough for all the work they put in. Noone

would want to create powerpoints, lecture, and grease assignments for fun. People become

teachers because they love to see the community grow, students adapt, and set everyone up for

success. I have never ended a semester without having a single conversation with a teacher.

Teachers wake up everyday knowing they make a difference in this world.

Guidance and connections are knowledge that can be shared throug generations. How

experience is passed down can be taken in many ways but Sakshi Gupta claims mentors are more
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likely to relay information compared to teachers. This is shown in Guptas article, “Mentoring vs

Teaching – Which Learning Method Should You Choose.” Gupta mentions,

Teaching is more of a giver approach to learning wherein the giver (teacher) is in

control of the situation as it’s a teacher who decides what knowledge he/she wants

to share with the student. Mentoring is more of a seeking approach to learning

where a student prepares for the session and decides what guidance and

information he/she needs and seeks that clarification from the mentor.

A conflicting experience to Gupta’s claim is a class I took. It was an intro into stocks and

investments class. In this course after learning all the investing lingo each student was to invest

one-hundred thousand fake dollars into the real stock market through a website that would link

New York City's wall street to our laptops. This course ran virtually exactly how Gupta

represents mentoring. The lessons were based on the questions we had and problems we came

across. We learned why we had to research our investments, why to take prophets and not think

about what we could have made, and why the best way to learn is to just get started. In that

course I was able to make all the bad decisions and my professor would teach us about what we

could have done differently. The course was run on a cause and effect pattern, if we succeeded at

something we learned why and how to recreate those results.

While the learning process is easier and less risky, how would someone be able to

transfer their new knowledge into the real world? How would someone obtain connections?

Chuck Eesley and Yanbo Wang article titled, “The Effects of Mentoring in Entrepreneurial

Career Choice,” perfectly situated answers to the previous questions. Eesley and Wang state,

“Mentors of all types may help mentees … by giving them direct feedback or by suggesting

courses of action or people to talk with.”

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This drives the motive that mentors have more connections than teachers. Pushing that if

you are a lost student asking for help and if the teacher does not know you are stuck by yourself.

This can not be further from the truth! Teachers work as a team teaching a specific curriculum

with many coworkers. One singular teacher world alongside hundreds of teachers in a school so

it is bound that they can lead you to someone who can guide a student to an answer.

With the vast amount of connections and bonds a student can form in further education

there is no doubt they will par or even surpass someone with a mentor. The decision has become

easy to pick by weighing out some differences between mentors and teachers. Teachers will

create bonds with a student, love to educate, and have plenty of connections to support and excel

a student to success.
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Works Cited

Government of the United States "Benefits of Mentoring for Young People." Youth.gov, 2022

youth.gov/youth-topics/mentoring/benefits-mentoring-young-people#:~:text=Mentoring

%20has%20 also%20been%20 linked,Moore%2C%20%26%20Hair%2C%202002.

Eesley, Chuck and Wang, Yanbo. “The Effects of Mentoring in Entrepreneurial Career Choice.”

The Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership, 2014.

https://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Chuck_Eesley_Paper1.pdf

Gupta, Sakshi. “Mentoring vs Teaching – Which Learning Method Should You Choose?” Spring

Board. 2021. https://www.springboard.com/blog/career-advice/teaching-vs-mentoring/

Parmar, Parina. “5 Differences Between Mentoring and Teaching.” ClassPlus Growth Lab.

2022.https://classplusapp.com/growth/5-differences-between-mentoring-and-teaching/

Smith, Brendan. “The lifelong benefits of mentoring.” grand PSYCH Magazine.

2014.https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2014/11/mentoring-benefits

The Majical Team. “Teacher creates ‘Gentleman’s Club’ to teach life lessons to young boys with

no dad at home.” The Majical Team.

2019.https://majically.com/no-dad-at-home-teacher-creates-gentlemans-club-to-teach-life

-lessons-to-boys/#:~:text=Raymond%20Nelson%20is%20the%20student,teach%20his%

20students%20life%20lessons.