Dr. Bernadette Sanchez: Race and Ethnicity in Mentoring Relationships
When many people think about mentoring, one of the first images that 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 images that we conjure up usually have common themes: the youth comes from a troubled background or lacks stability in his or her life, and 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 may not be immediately apparent 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?
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 do not. 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 that enable us to make rough generalizations about this relationship.
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 40 adult mentors and students, two schools, and a successful Dallas program model. Today the SpringBoard Mentor Program involves over 600 mentor matches on over 15 campuses throughout the school district.
LinkingUp College Students and Middle Schoolers
Pairing middle school students with college students can make for interesting and diverse mentoring relationships. Such relationships can have a great impact on all students involved. Metro Youth Partnership in Moorhead, Minnesota, successfully runs such a mentoring program called LinkingUp, which was started five years ago and pairs future teachers from Concordia College with middle school students whom teachers and counselors have identified as showing great academic potential. These students may not have a network of support and the knowledge of what takes to go to college. Mentors show them what it is like to be a college student and encourage them to see college in their future.
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 percent. 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?
