What is Mentoring?
The mentor has a toolbelt that they have had years to assemble; tools that they can now use to guide and empower the mentee to create their own toolbelt of social capital. The mentor becomes a trusted partner in the process of “studenting” at college. As an agent in the institution who can help the mentee navigate this new environment, the mentor can provide mentees with information and resources that have not been given to them by either the institution (administration, professors, deans, etc.), or their own support networks (family, friends, caregivers). - Alexis Giron
Questions for
Reflection
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Think about what mentoring means to you and how you are using that definition as you read the experiences and analyses presented here.
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What does mentoring mean to you?
How do your identities, history, and positionality inform your ideas and questions about mentoring?
How might you categorize your questions? Are some about yourself? The role? The context in which you work? Are some about racial, cultural, linguistic, and other identity-linked aspects of mentoring?
What is your definition of your role as mentor, mentee, both, something else? How does your definition align or exist in tension with the definition(s) given to you?
Mentoring is the physical, mental, and/or emotional act showing up, teaching one to see their inner potential and the importance of self-advocacy. As a mentor you listen to learn, evolve, and assist, by stepping in when a student/individual may not have the power/strength/courage to do so themselves. A mentor is fluid, but undeniably the key in the mentor-mentee structure.” -- Princess Jefferson