Volunteer Mentor Review

The mentoring role involves working with your allocated students on a 1-1 basis and offering in class support. However City Year over emphasise the time allocated to 1-1 sessions and the majority of mentors time is supporting students in lessons. This can often feel frustrating with it feeling like you are a teaching assistant rather than mentor. Mentors can also help with extra curricular clubs but with the role being tiring this often can feel excessive.

Throughout the year we are given responsibility to mentor our students through 1-1's and attend lessons we think are most useful to our students. We are also given responsibility to lead team projects like the social action project. However in some cases we were given too much responsibility from a lack of support. It can be mentally taxing to mentor often vulnerable young people, and there was a lack of support and understanding when it feels like you are taking on too much responsibility for the well-being of our students.

City Year use a Skills Builder model to track the skills used throughout the year. Leadership opportunities are frequent, involving social projects and presentations. There are many opportunities throughout the year to develop your own skills, however as the year progresses frustration with the role and tiredness can limit the motivation to take these up. Friday L&D sessions are often focused around development goals but are very broad and not personalised to levels of existing skills. 1-1 meetings with your IO are not very frequent and there is a lack of sharing of best practise to learn from your fellow mentors.

The programme starts with 2 weeks of training. However due to a lack of understanding from the schools about our role, the training does not prepare you for working within the school. City Year do offer Plumm as a mental health support service, but this is undermined by a lack of in-person support and understanding of the challenges the role presents. The programme offers a clear plan for each of the L&D Friday sessions but they often feel too structured and like 'tick-box exercises' rather than being useful and practical for our role.

City Year offers a very Americanised and forced culture. We have to provide forced joys every week and then end with a cringey 'spirit break' which feels cult-like. Within our teams we have a productive and supportive atmosphere, however the Friday in person or online sessions often feel awkward. City Year would benefit from changing the culture to feel more authentic to the UK and not copy and pasted from the American programme. Many people left the programme throughout the year and this did create conflict and a negative atmosphere especially with a lack of understanding from our IO and City Year staff.

Overall the placement feels mis-sold. Throughout the recruitment process City Year over emphasise the impact you will able to have and are not explicit in the lack of 1-1 support in school. Many of the mentors feel overworked and undervalued with a lack of support. Working with our students is the most enjoyable part of the role, but it is very tiring and mentally taxing. The limited training makes you feel untrained and unprepared for working with difficult and vulnerable young people. Very few mentors on the programme across the country enjoy the role and many cannot wait to finish.

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