Want an Academic Breakthrough? Find a Mentor!

If you’ve been struggling to help your child succeed in school, look at your child’s relationships. Why do students typically fail in school?

In our experience, students struggle primarily for non-academic reasons: lack of motivation, health concerns, social distractions, organizational incompetence, time mismanagement, anxiety under pressure, and more. All of these pivotal issues can be improved through the patient, enthusiastic coaching of a personal mentor.

In ancient Greece, Mentor was hired by wise Odysseus to advise and care for his son Telemachus. In nearby Italy, Romans used the word “mensa” to say “mind” (which gives us the English word “mental”). Many believe that these neighbor kingdoms shared, through language, an important insight: that the mind is most itself, it is most alive and capable, with the help of a mentor. They knew that to have mental prowess, they needed a proud mentor.

This crucial insight has been lost over time. In today’s classroom, teachers crank out inflexible lesson plans geared towards standardized testing and entirely neglect (often because class sizes prohibit) the customized, holistic care for each individual.

Students are inculcated with arcane geometry formulas and historical data, yet many of them don’t know how to employ a growth mindset or study effectively. Many, many students simply get lost in the shuffle of the mass-produced monster of American education.

Our best advice to you: find a mentor. Not just someone who’s academically intelligent, but someone who is truly, deeply gifted at caring for and coaching others. Success in school is about so much more than academics.

BrainStorm’s Perfect Match Guarantee assures you that your student’s academic mentor will be a perfect fit – for private tutoring, college admissions help, test prep, and more!

This entry was posted in Brain Food, BrainStorm’s resource center for parents.
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