Youth Mentoring Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Youth mentoring is practiced in a wide range of social institutions, such as schools, churches, local businesses, and community organizations. It is commonly described as a relationship where a nurturing, nonparent adult (mentor) provides social and/or academic assistance to a youngster (mentee) who may be at risk. Programs are both community and school-based, using both professionals and volunteers. This entry describes various mentoring programs and summarizes assessments of their impact.

What Is Mentoring?

Mentors can be aunts, uncles, clergy, coaches, teachers, and other adults. Mentors share one of two types of bonds with mentees. The first is described as emotionally open and committed. In this arrangement, the mentor is like a family member and is engaged in multiple aspects of the mentee’s life. In the second bond, the mentor is more of a friend, with more limited openness and involvement. Regardless of the type of bond, youth mentoring is a form of social interaction that has a give-and-take quality, whereby both mentor and mentee learn from one another.

Traditionally, youth mentoring has focused on those children and adolescents who are considered to be at risk or “underserved.” Associated with these categories are academic failure, dropout, limited parental involvement, drug and alcohol abuse, and high exposure to violent surroundings. These deficits, combined with limited community resources (e.g., youth facilities, athletic clubs, and violence prevention programs), as well as the breakdown of the traditional family unit, have been thought to produce a feeling of social detachment among youth. Sociological research has noted that the absence of loving and supportive families negatively affects children’s behavioral development, leading to antisocial, aggressive, and even violent outcomes. Mentoring seeks to address this by fostering meaningful relationships with youngsters that enable them to thrive despite the daily obstacles that they encounter.

Many mentoring programs are geared toward helping youth cope with difficult social and economic circumstances. Programs like Community for Youth (Washington), Mentor/Mentee (Arkansas), Project 2000 (Washington, D.C.), and Youth Outreach Services (Illinois) reach local populations, whereas larger organizations such as the National Mentoring Partnership, America’s Promise, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America (BIGS) operate on a national scale. BIGS, established in 1904, is America’s largest youth mentoring association, operating in forty-one states and matching 70,000 young people with adult mentors.

Content And Structure

Most programs, depending on the needs of their population, employ curricula and resources that emphasize academic achievement, social competency, rites of passage, child rearing, career training, health education, spiritual development, and arts education. Despite this mixture of programming, the main objectives of youth mentoring are to enhance academic performance, build parental and peer relationships, and promote self-esteem and self-worth.

Mentoring can be highly structured or loosely arranged depending on the format under which it occurs. There are generally two kinds of mentoring formats: the community-based model or the school-based approach. Organizations like BIGS typically use the classic community-based model, which brings mentors and mentees together one-on-one. Mentors and mentees will often engage in some form of recreational activity that also provides them a time to discuss pertinent life issues. These interactions may occur on the weekend when mentors have free time. Volunteer adults are usually matched with youngsters based on shared cultural background, gender, economic status, life experiences, and spoken language. Mentors undergo an intense screening process because much of their time with the child or adolescent goes unsupervised. One-on-one interactions can be long or short-term, depending on the bond and chemistry between mentor and mentee.

As youth mentoring programs have proliferated over the years, the school-based approach has become an increasingly popular alternative to the community-based model. The primary advantages of school-based mentoring are that it is cost-effective and can operate in a peer group format. These programs, and the schools with which they collaborate, often share classroom space, photocopying materials, audio-video equipment, and staff assistance in order to minimize expenses. Furthermore, because young folks spend a significant portion of their day in schools, a school-based mentor (or a team of mentors) is able to connect with a larger group of students within a single space and time. Unlike volunteers in the one-on-one method, school-based mentors have the option of working as a group dynamic, where a single student or a small number of students can find support, advice, and guidance in a mentoring session.

Outcomes

Youth mentoring outcomes vary and depend on the longevity of the mentor-mentee involvement. Mentoring research has observed that children and adolescents in mentoring relationships, lasting twelve months or longer, show improvements in both academic and behavioral outcomes. Those in more brief interactions report a smaller degree of impact. On the whole, youth matched with mentors show a decrease in the following behaviors: stress, alcohol and illegal drug use, truancy, peer violence, and recidivism among juvenile offenders. Youth mentoring has also demonstrated an influence in building resiliency; character and competence; and a sense of connectedness with school, peers, and family.

Although youth mentoring is widely praised for its positive impact on the lives of young folks, it has also been criticized for the moralistic approach that it takes in trying to “fix” the deficits of socially detached, and even socially excluded, youngsters. Terms like at risk, high risk, and underserved focus more on stigmatizing and grouping individuals rather than addressing the larger structural forces that create these prescribed categories. This facet of youth mentoring is frowned upon as it does not seek to truly empower young people or contest the status quo.

Critics of this deficit model suggest that, in addition to passing on knowledge of how to be resilient, mentoring must also engage youth in examining human rights and social inequalities, as well as becoming agents of social change. A number of smaller, less-recognized youth mentoring programs have been established with this goal in mind: The Free Child Project (Washington); The REAL Youth Program (Illinois); Youth Serve (California); and Youth Service Project (Illinois). These organizations implement a variety of curricula that explore race and ethnic identity; sexual minority adolescents (gay and lesbian); and socially and culturally relevant issues related to social justice, democracy, and antiracism.

Bibliography:

Buckley, M. A., & Zimmerman, S. H. (2003). Mentoring children and adolescents: A guide to the issues. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Dubois, D. L., & Karcher, M. J. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of youth mentoring. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hall, H. R. (2006). Mentoring young men of color: Meeting the needs of African American and Latino students. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Miller, A. (2004). Mentoring students and young people: A handbook of effective practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Rhodes, J. (2002). Stand by me: The risks and rewards of mentoring today’s youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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