January 26 is Thank Your Mentor Day!  If you’ve benefited from the council of anyone in your life, you’ve benefited from a mentor.

If you’ve ever helped someone learn the ropes of a new job or skill, coached a sport, coaxed someone through a hard time in his or her life, or simply taken the time to listen, you’ve been a mentor.

January is National Mentoring Month, an opportunity to reflect on the power of being there for another person in a helpful, instructive and nurturing capacity. National Mentoring Month is more focused on adult mentoring of youth, but adults and youth can also be mentors to one another.

Mentoring is a tried and true method of teaching and learning.  Learning is for Everyone employs mentoring in our most successful programs, like our FIRST robotics STEM education program, and in our Picturing America humanities education project.  We work as mentors to others in the community trying to start their own programs, or seeking guidance on their own educational direction. And Learning is for Everyone has benefited from the mentoring of others as we continue to develop our programs and projects.

There’s simply no better way to learn –or at least to embark on learning – than from someone with more experience, and a deep and abiding belief in the value of sharing those experiences.

So from the bottom of Learning is for Everyone’s heart, THANK YOU! to all our wonderful mentors!   We couldn’t do it without you, and we’ll continue to pay it forward!

For more on mentoring:

• Center for Interdisciplinary Mentoring Research
• Free Management Library: Mentoring
• Learning Mentors and Informal Education
• Mentor.org