High school students must make an important choice that will
have a monumental impact on their future career paths.They must decide whether to go to college,
obtain vocational training, or enter directly into the workforce upon
graduation from high school.They must
also determine how best to prepare for this career decision.This is not a decision that one normally
wants to make alone or simply with the input of ones peers.Although ultimately, no one but the teen can make
this decision, it helps to have the input of parents, school counselors and
other adults with whom the teen feels comfortable and whose contribution he/she
respects.
CareerVid's Online Mentoring Program
Other than school counselors, many teens have no
access to adults with whom they can discuss career decisions.This is why more mentoring programs are
needed.At CareerVid.com we will provide
an online mentoring program for high school students that will begin offering services
during the Winter 2010/Spring 2011 school year.Although students can’t directly register for this program themselves,
if you are a student who would like to participate, contract either a teacher
at your school or an adult after-school counselor who can submit an online
application as a teacher/coordinator in the registration box to the right. If all requirements are met and seven or more students remain interested in the program at the time a mentor has been matched to your school or after-school program, then that facility will be accepted into the CareerVid Online Mentoring Program.
Why Online Mentoring Time Has Come In talking with scores of busy professionals during our
project survey, a recurring response to one important question had the
result of causing us to rethink whether to provide a mentoring option
on this site.Essentially we found that although
many people believe mentoring is extremely important and would like to
volunteer, they can’t get past the huge time commitment required to
participate. Initially there appeared to be no way around this time commitment dilemma and we thought it would be wise to pass on offering mentoring as a feature of CareerVid.
However, after further discussions among ourselves, the
team determined that bringing more people into mentoring was one of the essential reasons for creating this site.The task that we
had to resolve was how to create a program that makes mentoring as
convenient as possible for professionals and students alike. We eventually determined that the only way to effectively resolve our dilemma was to conduct the program entirely online.
The Internet has made online mentoring extremely practical
and much more cost-effective than traditional face-to-face mentoring.It has also made non issues out of many of
the problems of traditional mentoring programs.Now, those thousands of potential volunteers who had no flexibility in their
schedules to allow them to participate as mentors find that they now have the
time to contribute a couple of hours a week to an online program.Mentors no longer have to be concerned about an inability to participate in rural or urban environments
due to distance or perceived personal safety issues for either the mentors or students, as mentors can now simply log on from their
desk to the mentoring site.Online mentoring programs also make it
easier for mentors of a particular gender or ethnic group to work with a protégé group of the same gender or ethnicity.
Little Commitment Time Required
Our online mentoring program only requires a commitment from mentors of one monthly one-hour webcam lunch or one hour webcam after-school session with their protégé group, along with email responses to students’ questions or responses a week following each session.
The First And Last Meetings
The initial webcam meeting will allow the teacher-coordinator to make introductions and have the mentor create a dialogue with the students.The purpose of the dialogue is to help both parties become familiar with each other and to set the agenda for all future sessions and email communication.Each student must be assigned either a letter or number designation to distinguish one from the other. That designation will be assigned by the teacher/coordinator and will remain with the student throughout each future interaction with the mentor.
The last meeting concentrates on achievements met and the ways of reaching goal discussed during previous sessions.No direct contact is ever made between the mentors and the protégés.
