Adult Case Study - Paul Hamer

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Paul Hamer works for the Leeds City Council City Services department. They provide excellent support to the Education Leeds Aimhigher mentoring initiative by allowing interested members of staff time off work to meet with an individual student at their school for an hour every two or three weeks.

Paul says that “You don’t have to be well-up in maths or psychology or any other ‘ology’ to be a mentor; what it boils down to is being patient, reliable, non-judgemental and interested in helping your mentee to improve his or her future prospects. However, the training and back-up provided by Leeds Mentoring prepares you such that it need not be anything but an enjoyable experience. There is good help on hand from school staff and you are only relating to one carefully selected person.

In amongst all the football chat we have covered things like reading bus timetables (it can be intellectually demanding at times this mentoring role), writing letters of application for temporary jobs, finding out about courses available at local colleges - there are many things you can do to give the mentees individual attention and encouragement that they may not otherwise receive. Both of them have accompanied me on visits to building sites in my job as a structural engineer. being one of the contributing factors to that success.”

“I have had lots of help and useful feedback from the mentor co-ordinators at the schools. They have been pleased with the positive effect that mentoring has had on the students involved and even attribute a ‘knock-on effect’ as leading to improvements in some of their classmates. Of course it is not just a one-way thing and mentors will tell you that they themselves have benefited in many ways. I have certainly found the experience satisfying and enjoyable.”