Mentoring Philosophy

A mentoring philosophy is many things. I tend to agree with Galbraith's article it should promote self-directedness, fosters change---through a thought process and dialogue, and independence. A mentoring process is a path that is directed and for the most part led by the protege. The job of the mentor is" massage " the protege to their own conclusion based on what was brought to the table for discussion. It should sort of be an enlightenment in self discovery. The mentor asks questions that eventually the protege will have to come to an answer to through self discovery and development.

In this process there are many pitfalls that halt the mentoring process. I will start with my biggest setback that I learned to harness when I became a mentor. A mentor is not there to give answers or "show" how things could be done. I first treated it like my classroom teaching or as a I would a coach out on the field. I had to learn that it was " NOT ABOUT ME". So once I learned this and took a back seat to the process and let the mentor become a viable piece to the process, the mentoring experience became a wonderful experience. Besides not following the philosophy as in the first paragraph, there are other hurdles to the mentoring process that have to be overcome. In Hansman's " Reluctant Mentors......" she explains that the mentoring process can come across problems when the cultural norms of a business or society are crossed for example, cross-gender lines, or cross- racial lines are areas that if not handled properly can screw of the experience for everyone involved. If the mentor is not in a position of acceptance of the protege or the mentor thinks that the protege is inferior in anyway the process is doomed to fail. The mentor role as stated above is one of equal or in some cases subservience. It is difficult to be a mentor if you think you know it all or not service minded.

"Mentoring can be a catalyst for improving the personal and professional aspects of the mentor and the mentee. Both roles have benefits in the areas of learning new things, developing in personal and professional ways, as well as enhancing the potential for increased
autonomy self-direction, and empowerment." (Galbraith Celebrating Mentoring) This is why I think that mentoring is different than any other relationship. A teacher/student relationship is based usually on hierarchy which works on the system of "i know more than you". It is different than a peer relationship because those are usually based on the idea of equality and in my opinion personal relationship. The mentor provides the best of both worlds. You treat each other as peers and as equals but there is that comfort that a mentor should provide through the process that should make the protege think..." I am going to figure this out but I know that if I have questions or concerns I have someone who can help me out". In this process you are also growing professionally and personally. An example of this is that every time I am in a mentor relationship with someone I learn to, ex. how to handle a discipline problem a different way or a quicker way to manipulate a computer program...etc)

Mentoring can be strengthened by technology by allowing the participants to meet remotely instead of face to face all the time. This loosens the reigns to coordinating busy schedules. If you have the set-up people can video broadcast to each other remotely. This is pretty cool. I want to try this. I do think that people might rely of technology to much, there is something that happens when people meet together as opposed to being separated by cyberspace.

F.Y.I. ---I am the adviser on my campus for the mentoring program that we run at the middle school across the street, also I am a Mentor in the BTSA program. Both are formal mentoring situations.