Eastern Iowa Farmer Fall 2021

Earning your cape
through mentorship
By JENNA STEVENS
Ag in the Classroom
Coordinator
Clinton County Farm Bureau
EASTERN IOWA FARMER
do you
want to be
when you
grow up;
“What
or what are
you going to major in for college?”
These might be the two most
dreaded questions for any high school
student to hear, second only to “Hey,
did you study for the chemistry exam
today?”
Deciding what to do with the rest
of our lives is challenging enough as
an adult, yet we expect students who
are barely old enough to drive a car to
have it all figured out.
All of us are guilty of asking these
questions, myself included, especially
if the student we are talking to is a
senior. It is just what you ask. And
we also make assumptions about
what the correct answer to those
questions should be. Most of the time
it involves getting a four-year college
degree and a job that makes at least
$50K a year. For those kids who
tell us they do not know what they
want to do, we are immediately put
off. How can you be a senior in high
school and not know?
It is the panic to avoid the “I don’t
know” answer that sometimes causes
kids to close their eyes and blindly
throw a dart towards a career that
they think sounds cool or might make
them a lot of money. But once they
start taking classes in a specific field,
they oftentimes realize it is not what
they initially thought.
As the executive director of the
CAC Media Group, I have the
privilege to work with some of the
best and brightest students in Clinton
County. These students write about,
interview, and connect to people
all over the country and have built
themselves impressive resumes in the
process. They have not been able to
accomplish these things alone. Each
of these students has found mentors
within agriculture, people who have
invited them in and taken the time to
guide them to be better versions of
themselves.
Mentorship is a term that most
of us associate with someone else’s
action. Mentors are not who we
are; rather, they are some unknown
persons who devote their weekends
to tutoring underprivileged youth or
star athletes who put on children’s
camps and then sign autographs at the
end of the day. Mentors are people
with something to offer. We are just
normal people, no superhero cape
around our shoulders. And yet most
of us have memories of a time when
we coached a little league team or
volunteered in our child’s classroom
to talk to them about our career or an
interesting hobby we might have.
It is these everyday moments of
teaching that prompted the members
of our media team to create their
own mentor’s project as a way to
help connect kids who are looking
for guidance in their futures with
adults who have experiences or skills
they can share. The premise behind
this project is to show students what
opportunities are available to them
based on the types of things they
are interested in and help them gain
real-life knowledge about a career
before they start college.
The process of pairing up students
with mentors starts with honest
conversations about strengths,
weaknesses, passions, and dislikes.
These conversations are designed to
help students recognize what they
like doing and what they are good
at rather than focusing on a specific
job or salary point. What students
sometimes find is that their strengths
and passions do not always align with
their original thoughts about a career,
but, instead, they are actually interested
in doing something that they
maybe were not even aware was an
option.
Trying out different career paths
through job shadows, interviews, or
even project-based learning gives students
the chance to experience what
their daily tasks may entail and is
also an opportunity for adults to share
the professional knowledge they have
gained over the years.
This sharing of self through knowledge
and time is what it really means
to be a mentor and is also what makes
the biggest impact on students. Those
individuals in the community and
across the country who have stepped
up to help share with kids have found
their own lives have been enhanced
because of the experience. Mentors
all across Iowa are creating a positive
difference in the lives of students,
and that is certainly worthy of a
superhero cape. n
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