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Week 7

Mentoring Reflections

My mentor said, “Let’s do it,” not, “You do it.”

—Jim Rohn

Day 1: Mentoring adolescents from high-risk environments

There might be occasions when you wonder, as a mentor of an adolescent mentee living within a high-risk environment, whether you genuinely can contribute much that is positive to this young life.

Let me share some ideas from youth mentoring research to encourage you either to keep on keeping on as a mentor, or to join a youth mentoring program focused on youth who live in high-risk environments, and where you receive professional support and encouragement.

•Encourage your mentees to reach their potential, and consistently speak positive messages of “hope” into their lives.

•Help and guide your mentees to become self-sufficient, productive citizens.

•Improve your mentee’s conflict resolution skills.

•Guide your mentees towards more reliable and responsible attendance at school or work.

•Improve your mentee’s social and communication skills in relationships with family, peers, and extended family. Also focus on behavior, attitudes, and appearance.

•Enhance a sense of social responsibility in your mentee’s life.

•Encourage your mentees to make positive life choices.

•Develop positive values in your mentee’s lives, often modeled most effectively by your exemplary attitude and lifestyle.

•Improve your mentee’s self-image through your interactions with them.

•Expose your mentees to positive and new experiences, such as community involvement, and how to respectfully understand different cultures and activities.

Retired school principal and vertical tutoring systems expert Peter Barnard17 reminds us how important networks are in a young person’s life:

From a child’s point of view, it makes sense to be surrounded by a number of supportive personnel options and to have leadership, mentoring, and support on tap everywhere. The greater the number and availability of connections (nonlinear), the more stable, resilient, and adaptive the person and organization. Being better connected and supported all the time is a better means of building resilience than attending a pro-social program some of the time.

Mentoring tip: Sow a mentoring seed and reap a positive person of influence who could one day confidently impact the world.

Day 2: Mentors motivate and inspire

Well-known mentoring expert Rey Carr18 points out that youth need additional adults in their lives to provide them with opportunities for the development of self-esteem, academic ability, and to learn how to become personally responsible for the choices they make: “Mentors can act as motivators, guides, and sources of inspiration to assist young people to successfully manage life experiences. Ultimately mentors can increase the likelihood that young people will benefit from educational services, reduce the possibility of leaving school early, and contribute to a successful transition between the school and work worlds.”

Rey also shared: “A natural mentor is typically a person from outside of our family who plays an empowering role to help mentees achieve life goals and dreams, explore alternatives, and deal with life challenges.”

Mentoring expert Dr. Susan Weinberger19 highlights the power of mentoring:

In the United States, chronic student absenteeism is a hidden educational crisis. It is associated with a variety of adverse consequences, including individual course failure, risk of not graduating, and poor socio-emotional outcomes. One promising strategy is to deliberately match mentors with students struggling with attendance. Once mentors know the source of the problem, they are helping students to find solutions through a variety of successful strategies. This is really good news.

Mentoring tip: Share your burning passions or ideas that drive your life with your mentee with empathy and sensitivity. “Always” be a positive person of influence.

Day 3: Prescriptive v developmental mentoring

A mistake some mentors make is to enter a mentoring relationship with a prescriptive approach. When mentors follow a prescriptive approach, they might do one or more of the following:

•try to save or rescue the mentee;

•try to reform or transform the mentee by setting goals too early in the relationship;

•adopt more of a parental or authoritative role;

•emphasize behavior change more than develop the relationship with the mentee;

•have difficulty meeting with the mentee regularly and consistently;

•try to instill a set of values that are different from, or inconsistent with, those the mentee expects at home;

•ignore the advice of program staff, where a mentor is linked to a youth mentoring program.

Researchers state that after nine months only 30 percent of mentors and mentees in a prescriptive relationship meet regularly.

However, in a developmental relationship, these same researchers state that after nine months 91 percent of mentors and mentees continue to meet regularly.

Here are some key aspects of a developmental relationship.

•The mentor involves the mentee in deciding how they spend their time together.

•The mentor and mentee make a commitment to be consistent and dependable.

•The mentor understands that the relationship might be fairly one-sided initially, but takes responsibility, as an adult, to keep the relationship alive.

•The mentor is determined to have fun.

•The mentor respects the mentee’s opinions and viewpoints.

Mentoring tip: Play a supportive, encouraging, and strengthening role with your mentee.

Day 4: Set performance goals

There are a range of processes for setting and achieving goals. Mentors encourage their mentees to experiment with different processes until they find one that works for them.

I tend to focus on performance goals when I work with youth, as I find mentees take ownership of their goals and, in most cases, go from strength to strength as they strive to reach their potential. Performance goals allow mentees to set processes in motion to achieve their eventual goal or outcome. Mentees control the process, though they cannot control the outcome.

•Performance goals follow a step-by-step process. This makes progress easier to measure.

•Performance goals are “behavior-oriented” and “specific.”

•Performance goals allow flexibility when mentees hit major obstacles or setbacks.

•Performance goals lead to ongoing achievement, which increases the mentees’ sense of self-worth, and confidence in their ability to repeat or improve on past efforts.

•Performance goals are challenging, yet realistic, and a valuable aspect of positive brain development.

Mentoring tip: Turn every mentoring experience into a learning opportunity.

Mentoring moments

Fifteen-year-old Matt struggled in my history class. This led to a discussion on how he could improve. We met for extra tuition each week over a nine-month period, at the end of which Matt had progressed from barely a pass to achieving a distinction in his final public exam.

During this time I also coached Matt on the sport field, so we had positive interactions away from an academic environment.

Matt’s mother wrote me this note which highlighted the importance of a mentor as a patient, non-judgmental cheerleader, and encourager.

We cannot thank you enough for all the help, interest, and time you have so willingly given Matt this year. He was, as you know, losing confidence and becoming very depressed until you gave him the encouragement he needed. As a result, you have one very staunch admirer and two very grateful parents.

Mentoring tip: Empathy includes making a genuine effort to understand the many physical, psychological, and social demands youth face.

17. Barnard, Socially Collaborative Schools, 81.

18. Carr, Mentorship.

19. Weinberger and Forbush, The Role of Mentoring, 80.