School has paired our class 10 daughter with an alumni mentor. How involved should I be?

ochre_kettle_6238 Apr 2026

The school has started a mentoring scheme this year. Each class 10 student gets a former student, now in college or early in work, for a monthly video call about subjects, streams and what college is like. Hers is a final-year engineering student in Bengaluru. She came out of the first call talking more than she has all term. I run engineering teams for a living and I'm itching to sit in, or at least prepare a list of questions with her. She has told me, very clearly, not to 🤷 Do I stay completely out of it? And is there anything a parent should check about how these schemes are run?

3 comments

ivory_window_77788 Apr 2026
My daughter's school ran something like this when she was in class 9. The questions she asked most were what the mentor earned at her internship and whether she ever wanted to quit engineering. I only found out months later, when she told me herself. That's the trade, I think. You stay out, and you hear about it eventually.
dusk_chai_87228 Apr 2026
My daughter had a senior from her school she messaged all through class 11 and 12, not even a formal scheme. What she got from it was the dull stuff nobody tells you: how much of college is waiting around for labs, what a normal Tuesday looks like. She would never have asked me those things. Check the basics once with the school: calls on the school's platform, not personal numbers, and a teacher who keeps an eye on it. Then let it be.
- orchid_badminton_70698 Apr 2026
  the normal tuesday part is right. my daughter still remembers a senior who described her first year of college as 'mostly being wrong in front of people'. she was 15 then. she's in her twenties now and still quotes it
mellow_drum_68748 Apr 2026
Stay out. The whole value is that it's someone who isn't you. If something is off, you'll hear it in how she talks about the calls.