Giving real world advice

TONY DODERO

As the graduates of this year’s class of 2005 head out into the real

world, many will be faced with real-world decisions, such as which

courses to study in college and which career path to take.

We all hear the stories about how schools are not preparing

students for these choices and not getting them ready to face the

challenges of the working world.

But I’m here to tell you that at least one high school in

Newport-Mesa is bucking that trend.

How do I know that?

Because I’m a mentor. And you should be too.

The Newport Harbor High School mentor program teams young students

with professionals, or in my case pseudo professionals, who have

real-world jobs in the career of their choice.

The mentors meet with the students on a monthly basis through the

school year and give them advice on how to get jobs in the field,

what the educational expectations are, what the salary expectations

are, how does the career mesh with family life and the biggest

question of all -- will this career make you happy?

I agreed to be a mentor at the beginning of last year’s school

semester after being asked by Ellie Gruenebaum, the mentor

coordinator at Newport Harbor.

Gruenebaum set up monthly meetings with a host of mentors from law

enforcement, sales and marketing, the media and much more.

Most of the time, I was teamed up with Brian Martinez, a reporter

with the Orange County Register, and Newport Beach resident Irene

Dunlap, an author in the wildly popular Chicken Soup for the Soul

series of books.

We met at lunch time for about 45 minutes with a group of eager

students, one of whom was soon-to-be senior Rachel Schmidt. Some of

the students, and Rachel was one of them, took advantage of job

shadowing opportunities at our place of work.

“Without Newport Harbor’s mentor program, I would have never had

this amazing opportunity, that has allowed me to really sit down and

think, is journalism really for me?” Rachel told me in an e-mail.

“Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to be a news

anchor,” she wrote. “Broadcasting journalism seems as if it would be

an ideal profession. However, after one meeting with the mentors, I

have come to realize that broadcasting is an extremely hard market to

get into and you won’t automatically be placed in California. Thus, I

am having second thoughts and believe it or not, I am starting to

lean toward being an editor of a newspaper or of some sort of printed

material, yet I still would like to major in broadcasting and see if

I can make it.”

Imagine that, she may actually want to be an editor. And Rachel

spent time not only with one of our reporters, but she sat with me

one afternoon and watched my exciting day.

“I felt the job shadows were extremely helpful, both the job

shadows of a reporter and an editor gave me two very different

birds-eye views into the vast world of journalism,” she said.

Truly, the program is a worthwhile effort and doesn’t take that

much of your time. And the payoff is that it gives young students an

opportunity to see firsthand what their chosen career may be like.

So next year, sign up and make a difference in a young student’s

life.

And you’ll even get a free lunch out of the deal.

For more information contact mentor coordinator Ellie Gruenebaum

at egreentree@socal.rr.com.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4608

or by e-mail at tony.dodero@latimes.com.