The Bond Between Mentor and Mentee in Prepa Tec High School

A mentor at Prepa Tec (a preparatory high school for university and career-bound students) is a professional who guides and accompanies students throughout their high school training. The mentor encourages students to develop life skills such as self-management, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. The strengthening of these competencies, along with the Prepa Tec students’ acquired knowledge, enables them to face the challenges that arise in their university lives and later in the workplace as professionals. In this article, I share my experience as a mentor for over 11 years, along with relevant observations regarding the bond that develops between a mentor and a student mentee. I aim to promote this relationship and the students’ emotional, physical, social, and academic well-being.

The Integral Tutoring System (ITS) of Prepa Tec was established in 2019. Currently known as the Integral Accompaniment System, it guides the institution’s team of mentors. The figure of the mentor (formerly known as a tutor) is crucial because the mentor serves as a bridge between the student’s academics and their student experience at school, especially caring for the student’s emotional and physical well-being. The team of mentors implements various projects and activities, such as “my strengths,” “my life plan,” “the wheel of life,” “reflections on my performance,” SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), and conferences and workshops, where they address social problems, emotional intelligence, ethics, leadership, healthy relationships, and many other topics that help students develop the life skills they need. Each mentor conducts individual consultations with students, supervises the academic performance of their mentees, and follows up with teachers and parents.

The role of the mentor in Prepa Tec

Until 2020, the people selected to be mentors at Prepa Tec were professionals from any area of knowledge. However, in 2021, it was decided that mentors accompanying students should be professionals in psychology, with previous training in this area, to effectively work on the students’ well-being.

Among the skills that a mentor must possess are empathy, an attitude of service, active listening, assessment skills, the ability to detect cases promptly, crisis intervention, identification of risk situations, problem-solving, a strong ethical commitment, and excellent communication skills for approaching mentees, family members, and support networks.

Activities of a mentor at Prepa Tec

1. Maintain continuous communication with the mentee. Regardless of the mentee’s academic results, bonding with them is crucial to exploring their near-term goals, accompanying them, monitoring their emotional state, and understanding their emotional and social bonds. It will help with the timely detection and prevention of risk situations.
2. Practice active listening with the mentee. The mentor must maintain active listening without judgment, prejudice, or interruptions. It helps the mentor make astute observations in the accompaniment and comments that are always relevant to the student’s well-being.
3. Recognize the mentees’ successes and failures. It is essential to recognize the mentees’ achievements and motivate them to move forward to achieve success in all aspects of their lives. Also, guide them to consciously identify their areas of opportunity and work to achieve their goals.
4. Guide the mentee in problem-solving. It will strengthen the mentee’s creativity and leadership, enabling them to identify different paths and determine an action plan to solve problems.
5. Help the mentee develop planning and time management skills. Time organization and management are essential for our mentees to know clearly when they should carry out their academic and student activities. Establishing and monitoring a plan enables them to comprehend the actions they must take to achieve their goals, and consequently, their results will be much more favorable.
6. Direct the mentee to external resources for attention. Sometimes, specific situations require more specialized care for the person. Thus, detecting the need to petition the welfare area on time is essential. If a medical situation needs to be treated, notify the health facility (TecMed in our institution).
7. Promote the mentee’s self-management. The main objective is for the mentee to be self-sufficient in all aspects. To do this, we must gradually “release” our mentees so that they can make decisions and seek solutions for themselves, without requiring our presence or support.
8. Establish communication with the people who make up the support network. The mentor must be very observant to detect unusual situations. For example, suppose a student falls asleep in class, performs poorly academically, or fails to attend consultations. In that case, the mentor should contact parents, guardians, or teachers to determine what might affect their behavior.
9. Promote the mentee’s security and self-esteem. Adolescents seek a figure who accompanies and comforts them, does not judge them, and guides them to perform as well as possible. For various reasons, many students lack this figure at home, making our work as support people crucial at this stage.
10. Strengthen the mentee’s critical thinking. Developing this competency in the student is essential. Teaching them to evaluate and discern the veracity of the information they find on the internet, social networks, video game platforms, and artificial intelligence sources is essential for making better decisions in their daily lives.

The mentor’s first contact with the student occurs with an initial interview to obtain relevant data that will lead to the establishment of an action plan for each student’s personal well-being. It should be noted that, unlike the program director, who accompanies the student during the three years of high school, the mentor may or may not change each semester.

Each mentor is in charge of approximately 120 students belonging to four groups. The students who comprise these groups on some campuses are primarily randomly assigned. However, at other campuses, they are chosen by the students themselves or assigned at the time of enrollment.

The life of the adolescent during student years

In adolescence, young people experience changes in various areas, including physical, mental, social, emotional, and identity. The adolescent who previously always trusted what his parents told him now questions everything, does not trust them, and sometimes even detests them, letting them fall from the pedestal where, as a child, they had placed them for so long. At this stage, the peers chosen by the adolescent become the “new” important people, with whom they wish to spend more time, imitate, listen to, and enter into a process of reconstructing identity, convictions, and bonds.

Adolescents encounter other authority figures during high school, including teachers, directors, collaborators, and mentors, who play an essential role. The adolescent will develop a new bond with the figure of the mentor. From the psychoanalytic point of view, a new transference occurs. Sigmund Freud (1914) established the concept of transference, which consists of an individual throughout his life repeating patterns of behavior rooted in the bonds he had in his childhood, mainly with parental and maternal figures. Likewise, for Calderon (2005), who considered the school context and the relationship between the learner and the teacher, the educator represents or symbolizes a pedagogical authority as an archetypal connection with the authorities of childhood. It is essential to be clear that mentoring is not a therapeutic treatment; instead, it is a one-on-one accompaniment, where a conscious and unconscious alliance occurs between the mentor and the mentee.

Thus, the mentor represents a new bond in which the adolescent mentee repeats particular patterns of behavior that they had previously. These behaviors trigger affection and acceptance, but also rejection and resistance. These behavioral elements are essential for personal, emotional, social, and academic progress and relate to the feedback in the mentor’s work.

The primary function of the mentor is to maintain an objective, analytical, reliable, and confident attitude, flexible but not complacent. The adolescent, on the other hand, (in some cases), will make a strong effort to break the rules, to test the mentor’s love and acceptance despite their mistakes, or to leverage that new bond to turn the mentor into a permissive person who supports their misdeeds; repeating the patterns of behavior they had with a permissive mother and authoritarian father, or vice versa.

Here, the relevance of transference becomes evident, making it possible to write a healthier story for that adolescent.

Five points that every mentor should never forget

1. The mentor is the adult. In our relationship with our mentees, we are the adults. Therefore, it is vital to remain calm and prudent, not to be provoked by disruptive behaviors but to analyze them and channel them for the mentee’s well-being.
2. The mentor is not a friend to the mentee. Nor should it become a friendship at any time. Otherwise, the bond would be a peer relationship, and the figure of protection, comfort, and authority that we represent (like the parents or teachers of the mentee) will dissolve.
3. The mentee could idealize the figure of the mentor. It could be due to the significance of the bond that we represent, similar to the one they had with their parents, or because of the bond they wanted to have with them but did not have. Here, the mentor must be clear that this idealization is not toward us, but to his first bonds.
4. Mentees tend to complain about their teachers. The mentor should not become an ally who discredits the teacher. The mentor must listen to the mentees and guide them to improve their relationships with their professors. Please encourage them to communicate respectfully and express their needs regarding one or more specific objectives.
5. Guide the mentee to make decisions responsibly. Mentored students must feel heard, contained, protected, and loved. However, they should know that mentors will remind them as often as necessary to make responsible decisions to achieve sufficient autonomy and self-management to feel confident in adult life.

A new semester… a new mentor

“Moni, I don’t like my new mentor. What do I need to do to get back with you?”

How many times have we, as mentors, heard this phrase?

However, every semester is a new beginning—an opportunity for our mentees to break away and establish a different bond with a new mentor. By not allowing our students to change mentors, we restrict their ability to grow and become self-managing. Worse, we could promote emotional dependence on us, over-idealization, and over-identification, just as a parent would do who doesn’t let their children separate from them, fend for themselves, make their own lives, and live independently.

It’s nice to hear that our mentees appreciate, love, and recognize us. However, we must not forget that even though our work may be outstanding, in the end, we represent previous bonds; ultimately, the role of the mentor is not to meet the mentee’s personal recognition needs, which have nothing to do with the mentoring process. As Alvarado (2005) comments, “If the teacher manages to gain, so to speak, the child’s trust, it should not be due to a narcissistic compensation through which the teacher-adult prioritizes personal satisfactions. The adult must keep his gaze on the horizon of the process and not on the immediacy of the satisfaction of feeling good and loved.”

If we do a good job as mentors, the students will recognize this, but they will also be able to detach themselves and form a new bond. Suppose they have not developed the necessary self-management and independence (especially emotional independence). In that case, they will want to stay with the same mentor and not try their luck with a new one.

Reflection

Adolescents’ bonds with mentors will allow them to identify, develop, and explore new emotional, social, and academic possibilities that facilitate their well-being.

As mentors, we must trust our mentees, accompany them, recognize their potential, and guide them to advance and recognize themselves in such a way that they improve their future as adults. We will also serve as a training model for them, which the mentee will constantly observe. Therefore, being a mentor involves promoting good personal habits and accompanying our adolescents from a human perspective, while establishing a rules-based structure that allows our mentees to feel safe and know what is expected from them.

I hope the suggestions in this article will help improve our mentor role. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please share them in the comments section of this article or email me.

About the Author

Mónica Aimeé Hurtado Ochoterena (mahurtado@tec.mx) is a psychologist by training (Universidad Iberoamericana) with a minor in Didactics. Her Master’s Degree is in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Universidad Montrer). Diploma in Cognitive and Emotional Development of the Child (Universidad Iberoamericana). She is currently a Wellness mentor at PrepaTec Esmeralda.

References

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Castañeda Rojas, B., Zapata Muñoz, S., & Rúa Hernández, D. (2017). La transferencia. Un concepto, dos perspectivas (Doctoral dissertation, Psicología). Available at: https://repository.uniminuto.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ee57db1e-4691-436e-85e1-7e1134221c5c/content

Freud, S. (1913-14/1997). Sobre la psicología del colegial(1914). Complete works. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

Freud, S. (1932-36/1979). Lecciones de introducción al psicoanálisis. Nuevas Conferencias de Introducción al Psicoanálisis y otras Obras. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

Freud, S. (2008). Fragmento de análisis de un caso de histeria (Dora). Complete works (vol. 7), Amorrortu editores. (Obra original publicada en 1905)

F.S., D (s/f). Los fundamentos de la técnica psicoanalítica. Available at https://www.academia.edu/43371643/Los_fundamentos_de_la_t%C3%A9cnica_psicoanalitica

Real Academia Española (2024). Diccionario de la lengua española, Accessed July 10, 2025, at https://dle.rae.es/transferencia

Editing

Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Editor of the Edu bits articles and producer of The Observatory webinars- “Learning that inspires” – Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tec de Monterrey.

Translation

Daniel Wetta

Mónica Aimeé Hurtado Ochoterena

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