Write a blog entry on the significance, importance,
and/or impact of having a coach and/or a mentor to help you in your
professional journey.
I
think it is imperative for individuals to have both a coach and a mentor for
both their personal and professional lives. Coaches and mentors assist
individuals with enhancement of their skills, knowledge and direction. They
help to pave paths for individuals who are looking to excel in their personal
lives and also assist with the development of their professional journey. While
coaching and mentoring may concentrate on different aspects of a work
relationship, I strongly believe that having both a mentor and coach to guide
you is a necessity, in order for empowerment and advancement to take place in
an individual’s life.
The
significance of coaching and mentoring in my life has been extremely important
to my successes. The most coaching and mentoring I think I have received even
to date, was in high school. When I was in high school, I had a number of
coaches and mentors who assisted me with obtaining the knowledge and skills
that were necessary to achieve my Airframe and Powerplant licenses and who
helped steer a path of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my
life. While my coaches were mainly my teachers that specialized in a particular
or various areas of the maintenance or aviation related field, many of them
took the time out to have one on one sessions with me in order for me to have a
better understanding of the processes of what I was studying at the time.
The
importance of these coaches and mentors was essential to my success and how
hard I worked. It can be quite difficult to take a 14 year old, and have them
work hard toward obtaining these licenses when their friends are attending
another high school where they are getting out early and having fun with their
friends. I truly believe that my coaches and mentors at Aviation High School
were some of the most influential people in my life who continued to instill a
hard and honest work ethic throughout my five years of the program. The success
and growth they helped me achieve both personally and professionally is
something that I will always be grateful for. At an early age I was studying
and working hard to achieve things I never thought possible. The coaching and
mentoring I received was exceptional, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
I
specifically remember a teacher I used to have in high school for my sheet
metal class, named Mr. Pupora. I didn’t know it at the time but this teacher
was one of the best coaches I have ever had. Mr. Pupora was a very hard, stern,
serious, and borderline mean teacher. Mr. Pupora constantly challenged me and
pushed me to my limits. His sarcastic and angry demeanor, made me rebellious
and stubborn to his requests. I couldn’t take how rude and condescending he was
and fought him every day I could, to make him see how little I cared about his antics
to “make us better mechanics.” I even spent much time on “Death Row,” the
punishment the students called it when Mr. Pupora made us sit at a table in
shop class writing apologies or essays on any topic he felt would teach you a
lesson that day, because he caught you doing something wrong or because you may
have forgotten to do something according to FAA standards. One day, Mr. Pupora,
“fired” the foreman of the class and surprisingly made me foreman. I couldn’t
understand why he would do such a thing and instantly thought that it had to be
because he loved to torture me.
Once
I became foreman, I was responsible for the students of the class and their
actions. At first I didn’t take the role too seriously and let the students do
whatever they wanted, however, once I realized that I was getting into trouble
for the actions of others, due to my responsibility of them, I quickly changed
roles and started to shape up. When I started to see a different and more
respectable response from the class and my teacher, I began to realize that I
was in control of a lot more than just a class. I was in charge of my own life,
my decisions, my path, my goals and my actions.
I
started to work harder and soon realized that I wasn’t “fighting” Mr. Pupora
anymore, and if I paid attention closely, everything he was doing and saying
was a lesson. I may have hated it but this teacher did have an amazing way of
showing tough love on all of his students. He never made anything easy because
he said life wasn’t easy and we would all have to work for what we wanted. In
between the rolling of everyone’s eyes, deep breaths and muttering of how much
they hated the class, I had an epiphany on the lessons I was learning and where
I wanted to be in life. I shouldn’t have wanted things to come in easy in life.
Once I started to see how good hard work and accomplishment felt, I never
turned back to finding the easy way out of things.
As
the class continued on I began to go to Mr. Pupora for advice and guidance and
did my best to get to know who he was outside of work and teaching.
Interestingly enough he had accomplished so much in his life and loved to
teach, despite how he knew his students felt about him. I later learned and
understood that Mr. Pupora wasn’t there to be our friend and he wasn’t
concerned with whether or not his students liked him. What he wanted was to
find those students who wanted to work hard, who wanted to be successful and
who he felt had enormous potential and shape them into stronger, empowered
individuals. We discussed options of paths for myself in the future after
graduation and he made suggestions on job placement in areas he saw I exceeded
in. Our conversation were always stern, serious and straight forward, but there
were days when I noticed a smile on Mr. Pupora’s face when I had achieved or succeeded
in something I was having difficulty with. He never said it, but I knew he was
proud.
After
the class ended, I continued my friendship with Mr. Pupora and continued to
visit him until I graduated. A few years later I went back to visit and he even
had me speak to his freshman class to “shed some light on them.” While speaking
to his class, I saw the rolling of the eyes, the scribbling on paper, the text
messaging on their phones, and even the students who seemed to be sleeping. It
made me think back to my days as a student in his class and finally I was able
to see what he saw. It was then that I realized that Mr. Pupora was a blessing
in disguise, as he taught me very early on that I could do and be anything I
wanted and instilled in me some of the best qualities I have today.
A
few years after that, I went back to my high school for a second visit and
walked to Mr. Pupora’s class, only to find a different teacher instructing the
class. Thinking he may have been out for the day, I later asked when he may be
in, it was then that I found out Mr. Pupora had died of a heart attack the year
prior. A sadness came over me as I thought about this. He had done and said so
much to help me over the years that I couldn’t believe he wasn’t there anymore.
I thought about his coaching and his mentoring and how hard he challenged me to
be the absolute best I could be. While it saddened me that other students
wouldn’t experience his tough love tactics and maybe have an epiphany the way I
did, I was happy that I was able to have gotten to know who Mr. Pupora was
behind the wall he put forth. I will forever be grateful for his teaching
style, his coaching efforts to make me an exceptional mechanic and his
mentoring efforts which helped me to pave a path where challenge and success
were waiting for me.
