Winning Futures – Inspiring and preparing youth to succeed through mentoring.

Archive for August, 2011

Not only did my Winning Futures mentor teach me numerous skills for my future and how to efficiently function in the workplace, he also taught me the most important life lesson; you’re only as happy in life as you allow yourself to be.

-2011 Cousino High School Graduate

As much as I gave to my mentees through mentoring, I received even more.  When you know you have people who look up to you, you hold yourself to a higher standard.  It has always been my belief that a person should lead by example, and the more I encouraged my students to take responsibility for their work, strengthen their relationships with family and friends, and give back to the community, the more I found myself improving those areas in my life as well.  The more I listened to them and their concerns, the better listener I became to everyone else around me.  As I watched them pursuing their goals with more passion each week, the more passionately I pursued my own.

I cannot fully express just how rewarding the experience has been for me.  As a mentor, not only was I able to have a positive influence on three young men and become a role model in their lives, but also (quite unexpectedly) they had a positive influence on my life and became role models for me as well.

Richard Sulaka II - Winning Futures Mentor, Former Winning Futures Student at Cousino High School

Developing a positive attitude does not mean that you will never experience disappointment.  Having a good attitude helps turn your problems into lessons so you can learn and grow from them.

Helping students see that a positive attitude, or outlook on life, can lead to positive behavior and create success can be done having students rate their attitudes.

Below are some sample question used in the Winning Futures class.  Students are asked students to rate themselves using a scale of 1-5.

• You are able to find the positive in a bad situation?
• Instead of participating in gossip, you have the courage to say something nice or nothing at all?
• You are usually the first person to give out a compliment?
• Even when things are stressful, you are able to focus on what needs to be done?
• You put your best effort in all you do?

Before students can start working on a plan for their futures, they first need to evaluate where they are today.  All of us have both positive and negative assets.  To help improve the negative assets, it is important to first recognize what they are.  This can be done through a self-assessment.  Some example questions students can answer during a self-assessment are:

~What are some things I want to improve about myself
~My biggest challenges or things I worry about are
~I am most grateful for
~Things I like to do
~My friends would describe me as
~I would describe myself as
~The most positive people in my life are
~The most negative situations in my life are

Winning Futures mentors help students students evaluate these types of questions along with guiding them in setting new/realistic goals in the areas in which they wish to improve on.

Sometimes mentoring a student can be just as rewarding for the mentor as it is for the mentee. 

Do you have a mentoring story you would like to share?