Natural Mentoring Relationship

Abstract This piece talks about the relationship between black adolescents and their natural mentors and how it associates with academic engagement. The study is examining different varieties of natural mentoring connections and how it correlates with academic results. A natural mentor is someone who was already coexisting in the young man or woman’s life for example a father, uncle, older cousin, older brother, neighbor, or family friend. So the article is identifying the different type of natural mentors from 259 adolescents from 3 middle schools in a Midwestern metropolitan area. There are two types of natural mentoring: less connected and more connected. Teens that had a more connected natural mentoring relationship prospered in academics had high social skills, psychological well-being, and teacher academic engagement. While teens with less connected natural mentoring relationships had no change in any outcomes, they had equal abilities in social skills, psychological well-being, and teacher academic engagement. The study was saying that the characteristic of natural mentoring is what may determine if the relationship encourages more positive results. “Adolescence is a time of increased biological, social, cognitive, and emotional changes (Arnett, 1999)”. What
(2002) the presence of a natural mentoring relationship was associated with more positive school attitudes amongst black juvenile’s . Mentoring relationships assist the progress of improvements in the teen’s outcome in social and emotional development. When teens have someone who shows support, the relationship helps the juvenile accept themselves which gives them confidence, and will begin to develop positive interpersonal skills, which means because the mentor makes the teen feel understood, they are more vehement in their relations to others, this also helps the teen with problem solving skills as well as communicating effectively and to express their