Talk:Mentorship

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Should this page include information about the types of activities performed by mentors? Should it include advantages of mentoring? (Such as a discussion about why mentoring is useful, why organizations have mentoring programs, and a discussion of the challenges of mentoring for women and minorities.) I can add those things, but I'm not sure if they would be interesting to people. --Marthafein

I would think that all you mentioned would be useful. A criterion that I sometimes use is to ask myself if the material I have written answers any of the questions: What? How? Why? Who? and When? If the answer is yes, then it will propably a worthwhile contribution. mydogategodshat 00:55, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Pasted from somewhere 2 Historical 3 Typology 4 New-hire mentorship 5 High-potential mentorship 6 See also 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Pasted from somewhere

Placed here because I didn't know what else to do with it:

A practical and imaginative example of YOUTH AND SENIOR CITIZENS (elders) in mutually reciprocal mentoring relationships

Some important considerations

One innvovative result of both formal and informal education is finding ways to make powerful connections between and among different people and to surface practical ways to help citizens cross boundaries. To create and facilitate practical structures and opportunities for people of all ages to engage mutual learning and discovery, many educationists stress the high value of putting together in dialogue people who would otherwise never meet or talk to each other--in this insstance, youth and seniors.

Often an "intergenerational mentors program" is dedicated fairly equally to mutual learning and discovery among both the older set and the younger set. Creating opportunities for adults to learn from youth is an exercise in realism, with both groups having a chance to engage authentically. One goal is that both get to know each another better. A second is that participants learn new ways of expanding their network of relationships through rich, meaningful conversations.

A third goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of this model of collaborative learning beyond a school’s walls, testing it as a means of expansion in urban and urban-fringe environments outside an institutional school setting.

For the juveniles, among other things, intergenerational mentoring is a prelude to, and preparation for, the greater post-high school demands of higher education or vocational training. For the adults, among other things, the program is a mechanism that empowers them to work toward improved social and personal relationships with younger people.

Flexibility is a key component for success. There can be mutual adjustments to the specific circumstances of setting and schedule. Sit-down engagements may sometimes occur in the adults’ homes, or just as easily in offices or boardrooms or restaurants or other private/public gathering spaces. The get-togethers are called by any name: Supper & conversation, or breakfast break, or dinner downtown, or "lunch launch." There also are other similar names that typify being together at table. Simply put, the project goal and name depend on what works best.

This kind of intergenerational mentoring initiative can provide youth 14 thru 20 with access to highly skilled and motivated metro-area leaders and community activists, from 55 to 75 and older. Some live locally, some beyond our immediate borders. Each works or has worked within a major urban area. They are business executives, publishers, medical professionals, CEOs, award-winning writers, accomplished social scientists, ministers and clergy and others from the healing professions.

Generally the leaders are remarkably resourceful, working in partnership routinely with other organizations. They work in many fields of knowledge: community and economic development, law, finance, medicine, racial and social justice, politics, human rights, public service, and all the rest. Some of the adult participants have been—-and still are—-in the public eye.

One high school superintendent in a visible and highly vocal community in an urban fringe town, for example, recently said: "Youth need to know what is expected of leaders--the political and social pressures they are under. And leaders need to hear what young people think of the results of that leadership. Leadership can happen upfront or intentionally behind the scenes.”

In many cases the leaders are identified as thinkers and implementers and doers. They are capable of astutely integrating different approaches, and also communicating a clear rationale for the integration. In increasingly complex times-—here, think global/local interdependence and a global economy—-the leaders seek for a mix of personal and professional reasons to expand their network of relationships with young people outside the classroom.

Leaders are asked to see things from the kind of promising point of view that is energetic and youthful, with that point of view used judiciously. The viewpoint often is reasonably free of restrictive or obvious bias. Leaders seek opportunities to engage younger people in more personal and relaxed settings, outside the usual formality of institutional environments. The yearning in adults for a deeper social and intellectual connection with young people is a yearning true also of young people seeking deeper connection with adults.

Intergenerational mentoring can teach young people, once back in their school setting, how to share information and to prepare experience-based updates, presentations, papers, exchanges, dialogues, updates, and oral reports. They share what they themselves have learned from their outside-the-classroom conversations and encounters with the adult leaders and community activists.

It'll also happen that the a young person will develop a dynamic relationship with the leader in ways that allow that activist to come into rich and useful connection with the youth’s peers at school itself, or perhaps even with the youth’s family members at home.

To create and facilitate the structures and opportunities for those kinds of powerful connections is a significant part of working thoughtfully with social and educational systems in which youth are genuinely affirmed, in which youth are legitimated to build self-confidence. Intergenerational mentoring teaches young people ways of asking questions about their own perceived contradictions and ambiguities in their lives at school and home—-meaning those inevitable paradoxes and realities of life in a pluralist and vibrant culture.

At the same time intergenerational mentoring works with the adult leaders involved. They can come to know what to expect generally from youth. Knowing expectations frequently prepares adults ahead of time not to pander to young people. Mentoring helps adults engage youth in back-and-forth discussion and argument about issues of interest and concern.

Frequently the get-togethers will involve substantive exchanges on present day social, political, economic, ethical, and moral challenges, as the challenges are put out to the adult leaders by the youth. Both groups work together to understand the challenges. In equitable ways they each empower each other. All depends.

Intergenerational mentoring encourages adults and youth to do extra reading from books, magazines, newspapers, and Internet research, all in order to be better prepared to get the most out of the scheduled conversations. When necessary, an outside social or educational agency can also facilitate some of the follow-up work that grows naturally out of the conversations between youth and adult.

The outside facilitator can also help evaluate program progress as well as the results from a given project undertaken. In general, the subject matter of the exchanges is the very lives the individuals are living in their immediate circumstances. Often the focus is on ways adults and young people do or don’t (or, can or can’t) turn obstacles into opportunities.

Youth and elders come to know each other better personally, individually. Their give-and-take happens in settings that affirm equity and right relationship as tools for empowering and generating new attitudes, new growth, and building greater understanding and knowledge. Intergenerational mentoring brings different generations together in real and sustained engagement, sometimes in ways to inspire each participant reciprocally, both adult and youth. Actively sustaining the engagement is often regarded as one measurement of real success.

Intergenerational mentoring helps young people and adults both to see the rich complexity in each other and their worlds, often in new and unanticipated ways. There are plenty of youth desirous of going deeper in building relationships of trust and reciprocity with adults, relationships in community and beyond the routine settings of home or school or work. Equally, there are plenty of adult leaders who are deeply emboldened and enriched by getting to know youth outside an institutional and corporate environment.

Jim Boushay, Resources Unlimited Foundation

-leigh (φθόγγος) 05:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Mentorship refers to a developmental relationship between a more experienced mentor and a less experienced partner referred to as a mentee or protégé.

[edit] Historical

The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character of Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. Though the actual Mentor in the story is a somewhat ineffective old man, the goddess Athena takes on his appearance in order to guide young Telemachus in his time of difficulty.

Historically significant systems of mentorship include traditional Greek pederasty, the guru - disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.

Famous mentor-protégé pairs include

• Socrates and Alcibiades
• Paul of Tarsus and Timothy
• Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
• Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill
• Benjamin Mays and Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei

[edit] Typology

There are two types of mentoring relationships: formal and informal. Informal relationships develop on their own between partners. Formal mentoring, on the other hand, refers to assigned relationships, often associated with organizational mentoring programs designed to promote employee development.

In well-designed formal mentoring programs, there are program goals, schedules, training (for mentors and mentees), and evaluation. Mentors inspire their mentee to follow their dreams.

[edit] New-hire mentorship

For example, in some programs, newcomers to the organization (protégés) are paired with more experienced people (mentors) in order to obtain information, good examples, and advice as they advance.

[edit] High-potential mentorship

In other cases, mentoring is used to groom up-and-coming employees deemed to have the potential to move up into leadership roles. Here the employee (protege) is paired with a senior level leader (or leaders) for a series of career-coaching interactions. A similar method of high-potential mentoring is to place the employee in a series of jobs in disparate areas of an organization, all for small periods of time, in anticipation of learning the organization's structure, culture, and methods.

[edit] See also

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
• Youth mentoring
• Oystercorp mentoring and coaching specialists
• International Mentoring Network

[edit] Further reading

• Boreen, J., Johnson, M. K., Niday, D., & Potts, J. (2000). Mentoring beginning teachers: guiding, reflecting, coaching. York, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

• Carger, C.L. (1996). The two Bills: Reflecting on the gift of mentorship. Peabody Journal of Education, 71(1), 22-29.

• Cheng, M. & Brown, R. (1992). A two-year evaluation of the peer support pilot project. Evaluation/Feasibility Report, Toronto Board of Education. ED 356 204.

• Clinard, L. M. & Ariav, T. (1998). What mentoring does for mentors: A cross-cultural perspective. European Journal of Teacher Education, 21(1), 91-108.

• Cox, M.D. (1997). Walking the tightrope: The role of mentoring in developing educators as professionals, in Mullen, C.A.. In M.D. Cox, C.K. Boettcher, & D.S. Adoue (Eds.), Breaking the circle of one: Redefining mentorship in the lives and writings of educators. New York: Peter Lang.

• Daloz, L. A. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the journey of adult learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Kram, K. E. (1985). Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

[edit] External links

• Womens Business Empowerment Network
• Kinship Mentoring Network
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
• MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership
• Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, Cross-cultural and youth mentoring relationships.
• MENTTIUM, FAQs for mentors and mentees, general information on mentoring.
• International Mentoring Network Organization
• Triple Creek Associates, Web-based mentoring experts offering free resources and newsletters.

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