My Nonprofit Reviews

A Fantastic Intergenerational Mutual Learning Experience: As a mentor with Immanuel Presbyterian Church's Pathways program, I found the experience of teaming up with a young adult to be "guides" to a high school student rewarding on many levels. Learning to listen deeply and draw out the student into "hearing himself speak" (as Parker Palmer says) was a challenging and beautiful process, while also teaming with someone about the age of my own son as my fellow guide. We three shared our individual challenges and guided each other, while still focusing on the student, and the mutual respect and trust that we had was very precious. The tools the Pathways team provided gave us the jumping off point that enabled us to build that trust fairly quickly and we met weekly for an entire school year.