“I’m not here to repeat what your teacher or parents have told you or to lecture you. I’m here for you, and I want to understand what is happening to you,” says Poļina Ivļeva, a mentor in the “School – in the Community” project, describing her approach to working with young people. Her experience shows that behind absences, unfinished assignments and failing grades there is not always a lack of ability or motivation. Sometimes a young person simply does not know how to study, is afraid to ask for help or no longer believes that anything can be changed.
The “School – in the Community” project provides individual mentoring support to students at risk of social exclusion or early school leaving. The school identifies the child’s needs, parental consent is obtained for cooperation, and the mentor begins meeting with the young person regularly.
Poļina began working with young people from Salaspils Basic School at the beginning of this year. She previously worked in administration and is currently studying psychology and psychotherapy. One of her first significant experiences working with children was as a social educator at “Forša māja”, a unit of the SOS Children’s Villages Association Latvia, where she supported children who had experienced traumatic events within their families. She gained her first mentoring experience through the “PROTI un DARI!” project, working with young people who were not studying or working for various reasons.
She wanted to continue this experience in the “School – in the Community” project. Although both Poļina and Salaspils Basic School – the school she herself once attended – had been aware of the mentoring opportunities available through the project, no concrete cooperation had yet begun. Poļina therefore took the initiative and approached the school herself. Together with the school administration, she discussed the opportunities offered by the programme and how mentoring could be organised specifically at the school.
“If I had simply sat and waited for an invitation, I might still be waiting today. So I approached the school administration myself and said that I was ready to work with the students if such a need arose. Since this was a new form of cooperation for us, we worked together to find the best way to start and organise it,” she says.
The school responded positively, and during the first stage of the work, at the beginning of this year, Poļina worked with six young people. Most of them were ninth-grade students who had very little time left before the end of the school year but were at risk of not completing basic education because of unfinished assignments and failing grades.
Almost all of the young people told their mentor the same thing at their first meeting: “Everything is fine, I don’t need help, I’ll sort everything out myself.”
“A relationship does not develop simply because a young person is told: this person is now your mentor. Building a relationship is a process,” Poļina emphasises. “If a young person resists, I don’t take it personally and I don’t try to convince them that I know better. What matters to me is understanding what has happened and what we can do next.”
At first, it was almost impossible to arrange a meeting with one of the young people. He frequently missed classes, failed to show up at agreed times or stayed at school only briefly. Nevertheless, Poļina continued looking for opportunities to meet him, sometimes even finding him during breaks between lessons. A turning point came when she helped him deal with a specific problem at school.
“He realised that he could turn to me when things were difficult and that I would genuinely try to help. After that, both his attitude and the way we communicated changed,” the mentor recalls.
In another case, Poļina worked with a ninth-grade student who had unfinished assignments in several subjects. At first, it might have seemed that the difficulties were related to a particular subject, but their conversations revealed something more fundamental – the young person did not really know how to learn new material, break a task down into manageable steps or prepare for a test.
Poļina spoke to the teacher, found out what still needed to be done and sat down to work with the young person. Together, they translated words, constructed a text and practised telling it. At first, the young person was convinced that learning the text would be impossible, but after around two hours he was able to retell it to his mentor.
“You should have seen how his facial expression and body language changed. Two hours earlier, he thought it was impossible, but then he experienced it for himself – I actually can do this,” says Poļina. “That is also one of the tasks of a mentor – to help a young person recognise abilities in themselves that they may no longer even notice.”
A mentor is not a private tutor and cannot be an expert in every school subject. Nevertheless, as she points out, support sometimes needs to be very practical – helping a young person understand an assignment, develop an action plan, identify what needs to be learned or prepare for a conversation with a teacher. The mentor’s role as an intermediary can be particularly important, because a young person may not always have the courage to ask for another opportunity or admit that they have not understood something.
At the same time, mentoring also has its limits. In Poļina’s experience, there was a case when she and a young person spent a long time preparing for an assignment, and it seemed that all that remained was to go to the teacher and complete what they had started. However, the young person did not do so, because for some reason he had decided to accept that one failing grade in the subject.
“A mentor also needs to be able to accept that. I can help prepare, be there for the young person, open up an opportunity and encourage them, but I cannot do it for them. In the end, they have to make the decision and take the next step themselves,” says Poļina.
The mentor’s role is not to save a young person at all costs, but to help them better understand their situation, recognise the opportunities available to them and gradually take responsibility for their own choices.
Poļina repeatedly emphasises that successful mentoring also depends greatly on the involvement of the school administration, special education teacher, teachers, psychologists and, where necessary, parents.
“If the school community does not understand the value of mentoring, a mentor can end up feeling quite alone in their work. I am very fortunate because at Salaspils Basic School I feel like a member of one team. The teachers are responsive and willing to look for solutions, and we are all united by one goal – to provide the young person with as much support as possible,” she says.
During the first months of her work, several of Poļina’s mentees managed to complete their overdue assignments and successfully finish ninth grade. However, she says that the greatest sense of achievement cannot be measured in grades.
“The mentor’s most important tool is the mentor themselves – their personality, life experience and professional experience. The more diverse that experience is, the more opportunities there are to find a way to connect with a young person. What gives me the greatest satisfaction in this work are the moments when that connection is finally established – when a young person begins to trust you, asks for help themselves and starts believing that they are capable of achieving more than they previously thought,” Poļina concludes.
More about the project: “School – in the Community” project
This story was produced with support from EU funds.
