Better Together: Empowerment Through Mentorship

Jan 26

Trenita Turner was hesitant when she was assigned to mentor students at a Will J. Reid High School in Long Beach, California. While she was eager to begin her mentoring role, the high school position seemed different from the early education placement she had been hoping for. How would mentoring teenagers be different? Would it be difficult to connect with them? What impact could she have?

Reflecting on the adjustment nearly four months later, it’s safe to say that Trenita is happy to have landed where she did.

“I wasn't expecting to be here,” she said. “So, when I got here, I said, ‘Well, I’m going to have an open mind and I’m going to do what I can do either way.’ And as soon as I got here, it was as though a lot of these children flocked to me just in the first week of me being here. They look forward to me being here. They want to open up.”

Turner is a mentor for Long Beach BLAST, an organization in Long Beach, California, that provides academic tutoring to the city’s youth. As a Neighborhood Grant recipient, BLAST plays an important role in Healthy Future’s Empowering Children initiative, which supports the health, wellness and futures of kids and teens. And as an organization centered on mentorship, it actively improves lives and outcomes for teens through academic and life skill coaching.

Research shows that mentorship helps youth by:

Increasing high school graduation rates
Decreasing high school dropout rates
Building healthier relationships with teachers, parents and peers
Enhancing self-esteem and confidence
Improving emotional wellness and life skills.

Turner stands with a student at Will J. Reid High School.

When a youth mental health crisis, swirling political stressors and the aftershocks of COVID-19 continue to weigh on young minds, mentoring may be a more critical service than ever. For kids dealing with added challenges, like difficult home environments or needing to step up as a parent to younger siblings the need to grow up quickly, a supportive adult who they can trust can have an outsized impact.

The high school where Turner mentors serves teens close to dropping out. As an academic mentor she assists instructors and works one-on-one with students to keep them motivated and on track to complete their work. She also provides a sympathetic ear while encouraging kids to develop their goals and plans to reach them – something she says many students haven’t had an opportunity to do.

As someone who faced challenges as a youth herself, Turner knows what it is to have to compromise her education to take care of other things. Turner lost her mother before she turned 21, and when she became a single parent herself, she left college to enter the workforce and care for her young daughter.

Years later, when she was laid off along with thousands of others in the aftermath of COVID-19, she saw an opportunity to return to school for her degree. It was during her schooling that she was introduced to BLAST, where she took the organization up on its offer to join its mentorship program.

Since beginning mentoring in October 2023, Turner has already seen the impact of her time there.

“I've noticed that as I've been here and as I've been pressing the students’ buttons a little bit more to activate their minds to want to get things done, I'm starting to see a lot of them achieve what they almost think that they can't,” she said. “I'm seeing that they actually do get excited when they finish a class and when they do receive what can look like a simple five credits. But those five credits are going into something that adds up to the bigger picture.”

Turner poses with Will J. Reid High School students.

While the students are happy to see her in class, Turner admits that it took time to build relationships with them. While many saw her at first as another instructor, time and patience have yielded trust and opportunity. Now, even students who were wary come to her for advice and are receptive to her coaching. Turner believes that as a mentor, she presents a different sort of resource than teachers, who sometimes have strained relationships with students.

Aside from the satisfaction that comes from helping students succeed, mentoring has also given Turner a better view into the challenges that teens face, both in the local area and across the board. She named the distractions of the internet, COVID-19 and trouble at home as factors that impact students’ schoolwork and hopes for the future.

“Some have said that COVID was a lot of the reason that they didn't do their classes to begin with or get past their classes,” she said I've also noticed that when they're at school, if they feel like they don’t fit in or if they feel as though they don't receive the same type of attention or the same type of care. Because other students they feel as though they kind of, you know, fall between the cracks.”

Despite challenges, though, Turner believes mentoring gives teens the extra emotional and academic boosts they need, particularly for students who feel they aren’t getting enough encouragement or support from home.

“I feel like it kind of opens up the door for them to see that there's something more to life than what they may have seen day-to-day or seen in their classroom setting,” Turner said. “They can see that there can be someone like them or someone that's the complete polar opposite of them and still have a care for them and still show them that that they can be someone in in this world, versus them being left out or feeling as though no one cares about them.”

Turner is just one of the mentors who works with BLAST to serve the Long Beach area, where Long Beach Community Action reports that 33% of kids between 5 and 17 live in poverty, a factor that is known to hinder academic success and negatively affect health and mental wellness.

BLAST offers both academic mentoring and a program called Bridge to Success, which helps students prepare for life after school through skills like applying for jobs, building a resume and setting intentional goals. All of its programming is designed to help kids overcome challenges and thrive.

BLAST reports that 91% of the students they serve say that they will go to college, and in 2022 95% of students reported that BLAST programs left them more prepared for adulthood.

As a mentor, Turner embodies BLAST’s mission through her passionate and empathetic work with classes. She keeps them on track during school, is always ready to listen and helps bridge the gap between students and teachers. All of her efforts add up to real academic and emotional progress for her teens.

As far as advice for those interesting mentoring? Turner recommends meeting students where they are and being up for anything.

“I would say go into it with an open mind, go into it with an open heart, be ready for the different challenges and kind of allow yourself to open up to the different things that can take place and the different things that can happen,” she said. “And understand that you may not have an answer for everything, but because you were open enough to accept whatever they had, you can try to find answers and try to find solutions that help them to get to where they want to be.”