Mentoring in a Catholic High School: The Movement to Receive

This paper explores the dynamics that underlie the process of mentoring high-school students, with Catholic Junior College in Singapore as a site of practice. Using Luke’s journey narrative of Jesus’ walk with the two disciples to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), a Christological framework is proposed that construes the relational practice of mentoring as involving four movements: receiving, blessing, breaking, and giving. Within the limited scope of this paper, the movement of receiving is focused on specifically. The dynamic of receptivity between teacher and student in a mentoring relationship is understood as an extension of God’s friendship, incarnated in the practice of fidelity through practical strategies of rapport-building in the classroom. The movement to receive creates a hospitable space of belonging upon which the movements of blessing, breaking and giving are dependent.