Greetings Asset Champions –
Search Institute is fortunate to have a Promise Fellow, Callie PaStarr working with us this year. This has allowed us to bring back the e-newsletter we were sending to you several years ago.
For this issue, we are taking a look at mentoring. Callie reports on research by Bernadette Sanchez as well as projects that asset builders are involved with in various states.
We will be including a 2 or 3 question survey at the end of each newsletter. Please take a moment to respond so we can continue to shape this newsletter to meet your interests.
And feel free to contact Callie calliep@search-institute.org or me Nancyt@search-institute.org if you have news we can share or questions you’d like to see addressed.
Nancy Tellett-Royce
Community Liaison
Dr. Bernadette Sanchez: Race and ethnicity in mentoring relationships
When people think about mentoring one of the first images that probably comes to mind is a picture of a happy mentoring pair, content and thriving because of the relationship each individual has with the other. The ideas that we conjure up of people in mentoring relationships usually have common themes: the youth comes from a troubled background or lacks stability in his or her life; the adult is established and knows where he or she is going in life, setting a good example for the mentee. But one thing that we may not think of right away is the diversity in the relationship. How do individual differences affect the quality or content of a mentor-mentee match? Does it matter if the mentor is white and from a middle class background and the mentee is a Hispanic youth whose family recently immigrated to the United States? If the mentor and mentee are both labeled as “black” by the casual observer but one is African American and the other is first generation Ethiopian American?
Dr. Bernadette Sanchez, an associate professor of Psychology at DePaul University, studies these questions in detail. Dr. Sanchez is an active and publishing researcher in the area of diversity in mentoring relationships. She gave a guest lecture at an event at the University of Minnesota on the issues of race and ethnicity in mentoring in November. Her lecture made apparent the importance of considering the background of each individual in a mentoring relationship. Despite this, very little research has been done as to the effects of individual differences between mentor and mentee. Sanchez’ work is, therefore somewhat pioneering in nature.
Race and ethnicity in mentoring relationships
Dr. Sanchez began her talk about individual differences by setting up a hypothetical situation. Picture a relationship between a white, middle-class mentor Ellen and a Hispanic recent immigrant Louisa. Ellen asks Louisa where she is thinking about going to college, to which Louisa lists off a number of local colleges in the area. Ellen objects and says that Louisa should go somewhere away from home so that she can establish independence. Louisa says that she thinks her parents would not let her do this and does not think it is possible. What might be the repercussions for the mentoring relationship?
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
Gender in mentoring
The effect of gender in mentoring relationships is a relatively unexplored section of mentoring. Some boys respond incredibly well to having a formal relationship with an adult role model outside of their family. Others don’t. The same goes for girls. But from what little has been studied of the effects of gender between adult and mentee, there are a few patterns which enable us to make rough generalizations about this relationship.
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
SpringBoard mentoring program in Spring Branch, Texas, is nationally recognized
Five years ago in the Spring Branch Independent School District in Texas, a small experiment was launched. The experiment involved about 40 mentors and students, two different schools and a program model to replicate that had been successful in Dallas. Today the SpringBoard Mentor Program involves over 600 mentor matches on over 15 campuses throughout the school district. The program is a great success, to say the least.
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
Linking-Up college students and middle schoolers
Linking middle school students with college students can mean interesting mentoring relationships full of both diversity and great impact on all students involved. Moorhead Healthy Community Initiative in Moorhead, MN successfully runs such a mentoring program. The program, called LinkingUp, was started five years ago and pairs future teachers from Concordia College with promising middle school students in the area. The middle schoolers are students that teachers and counselors have identified as showing great potential but who may not have a framework of support and experience in learning about what it is like to go to college. So they are paired with college students that can show them a little bit about what it is like to be a college student and encourage them to see college in their future.
Read the rest of this article (pdf)…
Working with boys in Maine
In a world that is generally acknowledged to be controlled by men, we are experiencing something of a paradox that some people call a “boy crisis.” Forty four percent of college graduates today are men. Thirty years ago, that figure was 58%. Some may cheer at this shift in numbers and applaud the growth of women in education, but the truth is that too many boys are not doing well in school. Boys are more likely than girls to drop out of school and three-quarters of the valedictorians in major U.S. cities are girls. If men are dominant in our society, why are they falling farther behind in schools?
