E-mentoring
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E-mentoring is a means of providing a guided mentoring relationship between business persons & school age children, largely through e-mailing. It began to gain popularity around 1993. Many of these early E-mentoring programs began when teachers began to see that E-mails served as an easier and better way to connect students with local businesses and community members. Some of the earlier known businesses to participate in E-mentoring were '[1]Cargill, '[2]IBM, '[3]Best Buy, and several others.
Resources and varied program structures now abound, with the core being that of guided mentoring of students around curricular projects, research and preparing students for business. These programs are overseen by a school coordinator or classroom teacher, and in those cases where a business is involved, a coordinator from the business.
Students generally look forward to receiving email from their mentor, and have a high degree of respect for them. The mentoring relationship brings an added interest and aim to the classroom that many students benefit from in significant ways. For the business and the mentor, the ease of use that email provides allows the mentor to spend a small amount of time for a large positive impact in a young person's life.