WHAT IS A MENTOR?

TRAINING FOR NEW MENTORS

OPPORTUNITIES

Schools
We currently partner with Communities in Schools North Texas (CISNT) to virtually mentor boys and girls at Peters Colony Elementary School in The Colony

Juvenile Justice
We currently partner with TJJD to support and (soon) mentor boys in Willoughby House in Fort Worth. We have worked at two other (now closed) facilities as well as Gainesville State School (maximum security). We also work as parole mentors and continue mentoring upon release and into adulthood.

Big Brother / Big Sister
We currently partner with other local nonprofits, local CPS / DFPS, as well as take referrals to serve as mentors for boys and girls in the local area.

GUIDELINES FOR MENTORS

What to do

  • Get to know your mentee. Try to really understand how things are for him or her now.
  • Be positive, patient, dependable, honest and sincere.
  • Be consistent, but flexible. Expect changes in plans.
  • Encourage, praise and compliment – even the smallest of accomplishments.
  • Be an active listener. Use language that’s easy to understand.
  • Be straight, honest and sincere (people pick up on falseness and shallowness).
  • Ask for opinions and participation in decision-making.
  • Work with your mentee. Share your knowledge rather than giving advice.
  • Be enthusiastic – it’s contagious. Stress the positive.
  • Be firm. Have your mentee assume responsibilities and hold him or her accountable.
  • Help your mentee use mistakes as learning experiences.
  • Help identify your mentee’s talents, strengths and assets. Be open to what your mentee can teach you or share with you.
  • Tell your mentee about yourself, especially what you remember from your school years (relative to his or her age).
  • Help them identify the significance for their own lives of the information you are discussing (e.g., possible future profession, similar experiences, etc.) – tell them how they can use the information.
  • Have activities planned in advance.
  • Take the initiative. A mentee who fails to call or attend must be pursued and the coordinator notified of the situation so that issues can be resolved and sessions can begin again, if applicable.
  • If you’re going to miss a mentoring session, call the coordinator and leave a message for the mentee. It is important to let the mentee know you did not forget about your mentoring session.
  • Learn to appreciate your mentee’s cultural and ethnic background. Strive toward cultural reciprocity.
  • Honor Your Commitment – This is extremely important! You’ll hear this over and over again!
  • HAVE FUN!

What NOT to do

  • Expect to have instant rapport with your mentee.
  • Be lenient in order to be liked – it won’t earn their respect, and they need consistency and structure.
  • Lecture, moralize or preach.
  • Tell them what to do (instead, you should suggest, invite, encourage).
  • Share personal problems unless it is to explain your current disposition (e.g., tired or irritable).
  • Make promises you can’t keep.
  • Be convinced that what mentees say is always what they mean.
  • Pry into the young person’s life. If a mentee pries into your affairs, it is okay to say that some things in your life are private just as they are in his or her life.
  • Be afraid to admit that you do not know an answer or that you have made a mistake. Find the correct answer and learn together. It helps the mentee to see that you are learning too.
  • Interpret lack of enthusiasm as a personal rejection or reaction to you.
  • Be sarcastic or use excessive teasing.
  • Refer to youths that reside in public housing as being from “the projects.”
  • Lend money.
  • Violate confidences, with the single exception of crisis intervention situations, in which case you must contact the coordinator privately and immediately.
  • Forget your own adolescence. What do you wish an adult had said to you or done for you at that time in your life?
  • Attempt to become a surrogate parent to a child.

A mentor is…

A trusted guide or friend

  • Young people today do not get much of an opportunity to be friends with adults, especially adults who are going to listen to them.

A caring, responsible adult

  • He or she provides access to people, places and things outside the mentee’s routine environment.

A positive role model

  • A mentor may be a positive role model. A role model is someone the youth aspires to be like, whereas a mentor is someone who offers to help the youth be whoever he or she wants to be. Today, youth have many role models; however, they are not necessarily positive role models.

Key Qualities of a Good Mentor

  1. Good listener
  2. Persistent
  3. Committed
  4. Patient

A mentor is not…

Mentors must understand that they cannot be all things to their mentees. Quite often when mentors run into problems in their relationships, it is because the mentor, the mentee or the parent/legal guardian did not understand the proper role of a mentor.
The mentor may have taken on one of the following inappropriate roles:

A parent/legal guardian

  • The role of a parent or legal guardian (governed by law) is to provide food, shelter and clothing. It is not the mentor’s role to fulfill these responsibilities. If the mentor believes his or her mentee is not receiving adequate support, he or she should contact the mentor program coordinator rather than trying to meet the needs of his or her mentee.

A social worker

  • A social worker is a licensed professional with the necessary skills and training to assist in family issues. If a mentor believes there is something wrong in the mentee’s home life, the mentor should share this concern with the mentor program coordinator and not assume the role of a social worker and attempt to solve the problem.

A psychologist

  • A mentor is not a formal counselor or therapist. A psychologist or psychiatrist is a licensed professional. It is more appropriate for a mentor to act as a resource broker and show the mentee how to access the services and resources he or she needs than to provide those services.

THE FOUR PRIMARY TASKS OF A MENTOR

01.

Establish a positive, personal relationship with mentee

  • Establish mutual trust and respect
  • Maintain regular interaction and consistent support
  • Make your meetings enjoyable and fun

02.

Help mentee to develop or begin to develop life skills

  • Work with your mentee to accomplish specific program goals (e.g., drop-out prevention, general career awareness)
  • Instill the framework for developing broader life-management skills, (e.g., decision-making skills, goal-setting skills, conflict resolution, money management)

03.

Assist mentee in obtaining additional resources

  • Provide awareness of community, educational and economic resources available to youth and their families, and how to access these resources. Act as a resource broker as opposed to a resource provider
  • Act as a guide and/or advocate, coach and/or model
  • Avoid acting as a professional case manager – View the role of a mentor as a friend rather than a counselor.

04.

Increase mentee’s ability to interact with people/groups/things from various backgrounds (cultural, racial, socioeconomic, etc.)

  • Respect and explore differences among people/groups from various backgrounds – Do not promote values and beliefs of one group as superior to those of another
  • Introduce mentee to different environments, such as workplace vs. school setting;
  • Discuss differences in behavior, attitude and style of dress

TIPS FOR BUILDING A MENTORING RELATIONSHIP

1. Be there

  • When you show up for every meeting with your mentee and strive to make things work out you send your mentee a strong message that you care and that he or she is worth caring about.

2. Be a friend, not an all-knowing authority

  • Be the adult in your mentee’s life who is just there without having to fix him or her. Hanging out and talking is surprisingly helpful to a young person’s healthy development. Young people learn more conversing with adults than they do just listening to them. In the words of a mentee:
    • “My parents lecture me all the time. Why would I want my mentor to be the same way? I have the best mentor in the program, but sometimes he tries too hard to be a mentor instead of just being himself. What I mean is that he thinks he always has to share some wisdom or advice, when sometimes I would rather just kick it and joke around.”
  • Of course, when your mentee comes to you for help or advice, it is appropriate to help them develop solutions. It’s also okay to check in with them if you suspect that they are struggling with something. They just don’t want non-stop advice. So, take the pressure off of yourself and just enjoy your mentee’s company.

3. Be a role model

  • The best that you can do is to lead by example. By becoming a mentor, you’ve already modeled the most important thing a human being can do: caring about another. Here are some other ways you can be a positive role model for your mentee:
    • Keep your word: Call when you say you will. Do what you say you will. Be there when you say you will;
    • Return phone calls and e-mails promptly
    • Have a positive outlook
    • If your program has group sessions, participate fully
    • If you enter a competitive activity with your mentee, keep it in perspective and by all means do not cheat (or even fudge a little) to help your mentee win, get a better place in line at an event, etc.; and
    • Let your mentee see you going out of your way to help others.

4. Help your mentee have a say in your activities

  • Some mentees will have a lot of suggestions about what you can do together, but most will need a little guidance on your part. If your mentee doesn’t have any preferences, start by giving them a range of choices. “Here are some things we can do. Which ones sound good to you?”

5. Be ready to help out

  • When your mentee lets you know that he or she is struggling with a problem, you can help out by following these tips:
    Be there for your mentee and make it clear that you want to help
  • Be a friend, not an all-knowing authority: Don’t fix a problem. Ask questions and help your mentee figure out how to come up with answers
  • Model ways to solve problems. You can also be a role model by describing how you overcame a similar problem in your life. Metaphor is a great teacher
  • Give your mentee a say: Once he or she comes up with a solution, don’t try to come up with a better one, but help explore all the possibilities and offer support; and
  • Be ready to help out by checking back and seeing how things worked out.

STAGES OF A MENTORING RELATIIONSHIP

Stage 1

Stage 1: Developing Rapport and Building Trust

The “getting to know you” phase is the most critical stage of the relationship. Things to expect and work on during Stage 1 include:

  • Predictability and consistency
    • During the first stage of the relationship, it is critical to be both predictable and consistent. If you schedule an appointment to meet your mentee at a certain time, it’s important to keep it. It is understandable that at times things come up and appointments cannot be kept. However, in order to speed up the trust-building process, consistency is necessary, even if the young person is not as consistent as you are.
  • Testing
    • Young people generally do not trust adults. As a result, they use testing as a coping or defense mechanism to determine whether they can trust you. They will test to see if you really care about them. A mentee might test the mentor by not showing up for a scheduled meeting to see how the mentor will react.
  • Establish confidentiality
    • During the first stage of the relationship, it’s important to establish confidentiality with your young person. This helps develop trust. The mentor should let the mentee know that whatever he or she wants to share with the mentor will remain confidential, as long as (and it’s important to stress this point) what the young person tells the mentor is not going to harm the young person or someone else. It’s helpful to stress this up front, within the first few meetings with the mentee. That way, later down the road, if a mentor needs to break the confidence because the information the mentee shared was going to harm him or her or someone else, the young person will not feel betrayed.
  • Goal setting (transitions into Stage 2)
    • It’s helpful during Stage 1 to take the time to set at least one achievable goal together for the relationship. What do the two of you want to get out of this relationship? It’s also good to help your mentee set personal goals. Young people often do not learn how to set goals, and this will provide them with the opportunity to set goals and work toward achieving them.

Stage 2

Stage 2: The Middle—Reaching Goals

Once trust has been established, the relationship moves into Stage 2. During this stage, the mentor and mentee can begin to start working toward the goals they set during the first stage of the relationship. Things to expect during Stage 2 include:

  • Closeness
    • Generally, during the second stage the mentor and mentee can sense a genuine closeness in the relationship.
  • Affirming the uniqueness of the relationship
    • Once the relationship has reached this stage, it’s helpful to do something special or different from what the mentor and mentee did during the first stage, which helps affirm the uniqueness of the relationship. For example, go to a museum, sporting event, special restaurant, etc.
  • The relationship may be rocky or smooth
    • All relationships have their ups and downs. Once the relationship has reached the second stage, there will still be some rough periods. Mentors should be prepared and not assume that something is wrong with the relationship if this happens.
  • Rely on staff support

Stage 3

Stage 3: Closure

If the rough period continues or if a mentor feels that the pair has not reached the second stage, he or she shouldn’t hesitate to seek support from the mentoring program coordinator. Sometimes two people, no matter how they look on paper, just don’t “click.” Some mentor/mentee pairs don’t need to worry about this stage until farther down the road. However, at some point all relationships will come to an end—whether it’s because the program is over, the mentor is moving or for some other reason. When this happens, it’s critical that the closure stage not be overlooked. Many young people today have already had adults come and go in their lives and are very rarely provided the opportunity to say a proper goodbye.

  • Identify natural emotions, such as grief, denial and resentment
    • In order to help mentees express emotions about the relationship ending, mentors should model appropriate behavior. The mentor should first express his or her feelings and emotions about the end of the relationship and then let the mentee do the same.
  • Provide opportunities for saying goodbye in a healthy, respectful and affirming way
    • Mentors shouldn’t wait for the very last meeting with their mentees to say goodbye. The mentor should slowly bring it up as soon as he or she becomes aware that the relationship will be coming to a close.
  • Address appropriate situations for staying in touch
    • Mentors should check with the mentoring program coordinator to find out the policy for staying in touch with their mentees once the program has come to an end. This is especially important if the program is school-based and mentors and mentees meet during the school year but the program officially ends before the summer starts. If mentors and mentees are mutually interested in continuing to meet over the summer, they may be allowed to, but with the understanding that school personnel may not be available should an emergency arise. Each mentoring program may have its own policy for future contact between mentors and mentees. That’s why it’s best for mentors to check with program personnel during this stage.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ISSUES OF CONCERN

Issues of concern are those that may have lifelong implications for the mentee, and therefore the mentor needs to report them to the agency. However, these issues do not necessarily require direct intervention. Because these issues may be part of ongoing situations and conditions that mentees face, mentors need to be trained and supported to accept these aspects of the mentees’ lives without judgment. Mentors and mentoring programs should not focus too heavily on changing behavior when issues such as these arise. Nevertheless, by staying aware of the challenges their mentees must face, they may be able to help mentees ameliorate these problems over time.

Examples of Issues of Concern:

  • Sexual misconduct
  • Fighting at school
  • Depression
  • Delinquent behavior
  • Gang affiliation
  • Substance abuse
  • Verbal harassment: sexual, racial, bullying, others

CRISES REQUIRING INTERVENTION

Crises requiring intervention involve issues of grave concern that generally require direct and immediate intervention. Some of these issues, like child abuse and neglect, are mandated by law to be reported to the county; others may require a referral of a direct intervention by the mentor program. MENTORS SHOULD NEVER BE EXPECTED TO HANDLE ISSUES SUCH AS THESE ALONE. In addition, many of these issues require collaboration with families of mentees, and this should be handled by the mentor program manager.

Examples of Crises Requiring Intervention:

  • Child abuse and neglect
  • Abusive relationships: sexual abuse, incest, dating violence/rape
  • Chemical dependency
  • Serious delinquency/arrests
  • Suicidal behavior
  • Mental illness
  • Physical harassment: sexual, racial, bullying, others
  • Other trauma

ROADBLOCKS TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

The following, while not always bad to use, tend to close down communication rather than open up communication and should be avoided in conversations with mentees.

Ordering, directing, commanding

  • Telling the child to do something; giving the child an order or command.
  • “I don’t care what other children are doing — and you have to do the yard work!” “Now you go back up there and play with Ginny and Joyce.” “Stop complaining!”

Moralizing, preaching — shoulds and oughts

  • Invoking vague outside authority as accepted truth.
  • “You shouldn’t act like that.” “You ought to do . . .” “Children are supposed to respect their elders.”

Teaching, lecturing, giving logical arguments

  • Trying to influence the child with facts, counter-arguments, logic, information or your own opinion.
  • “College can be the most wonderful experience you’ll ever have.” “Children must learn to get along with one another.” “Let’s look at the facts about college graduates.” “If kids learn to take responsibility around the house, they’ll grow up to be responsible adults.” “When I was your age, I had twice as much to do as you.”

Judging, criticizing, disagreeing, blaming

  • Making a negative judgment or evaluation of the child.
  • “You’re not thinking clearly.” “That’s an immature point of view.” “You’re very wrong about that.” “I couldn’t disagree with you more.”

Withdrawing, distracting, sarcasm, humoring, diverting

  • Trying to get the child away from the problem, withdrawing from the problem yourself, distracting the child, kidding the child out of it, pushing the problem aside.
  • “Just forget it.” “Let’s not talk about this at the table.” “Come on — let’s talk about something more pleasant.” “Why don’t you try burning the school building down?” “We’ve all been through this before.”

HELPFUL COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Open-ended questions

Open-ended questions are intended to collect information by exploring feelings, attitudes and how the other person views a situation. Open-ended questions are extremely helpful when dealing with young people. Youth, teenagers especially, tend to answer questions with as few words as possible. To maintain an active dialogue without interrogating, try to ask a few questions that cannot be answered with a “yes,” “no,” “I don’t know,” or a grunt.

Examples:

  • “How do you see this situation?”
  • “What are your reasons for . . . ?”
  • “Can you give me an example?”
  • “How does this affect you?”
  • “How did you decide that?”
  • “What would you like to do about it?”
  • “What part did you play?”

Note: Using the question “Why did you do that?” may sometimes yield a defensive response rather than a clarifying response.

Results: Because open-ended questions require a bit more time to answer than close-ended questions (questions that can be answered by “yes,” “no,” or a brief phrase), they give the person a chance to explain. Open-ended questions yield significant information that can in turn be used to problem solve.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing focuses on listening first and then reflecting the two parts of the speaker’s message — fact and feeling — back to the speaker. Often, the fact is clearly stated, but a good listener is “listening between the lines” for the “feeling” part of the communication. Using this skill is a way to check out what you heard for accuracy — did you interpret what your mentee said correctly? This is particularly helpful with youth, as youth culture/language change constantly. Often words that meant one thing when mentors were young could have an entirely different meaning for youth today.

Examples for fact:

  • “So you’re saying that . . .”
  • “You believe that . . .”
  • “The problem is . . .”

Examples for feeling:

  • “You feel that . . .”
  • “Your reaction is . . .”
  • “And that made you feel . . .”

Paraphrases are not an opportunity to respond by evaluating, sympathizing, giving an opinion, offering advice, analyzing or questioning.

Results: Using active listening skills will enable you to gather the information and then be able to simply report back what you heard in the message — the facts and the attitudes/feelings that were expressed. Doing so lets the other person know that you hear, understand and care about his or her thoughts and feelings.

"I" Messages

These messages give the opportunity to keep the focus on you and explain your feelings in response to someone else’s behavior. Because “I” messages don’t accuse, point fingers at the other person or place blame, they avoid judgments and help keep communication open. At the same time, “I” messages continue to advance the situation to a problem-solving stage.

For example: “I was really sad when you didn’t show up for our meeting last week. I look forward to our meetings and was disappointed not to see you. In the future, I would appreciate it if you could call me and let me know if you will not be able to make it.”

Avoid: “You didn’t show up, and I waited for an hour. You could have at least called me and let me know that you wouldn’t be there. You are irresponsible.”

Take care that the following actions and behaviors are congruent with an honest, open heart:

  • Body language: slouching, turning away, pointing a finger
  • Timing: speaking too fast or too slow
  • Facial expression: smiling, squirming, raising eyebrows, gritting teeth
  • Tone of voice: shouting, whispering, sneering, whining
  • Choice of words: biting, accusative, pretentious, emotionally laden

Results: “I” messages present only one perspective. Allowing the other person to actually have a point of view and hearing it doesn’t mean that he or she is right. “I” messages communicate both information and respect for each position. Again, this skill moves both parties along to the problem-solving stage.

Active Listening

The following four communication skills are very helpful for mentors to develop and practice. These skills are particularly useful when your goal is to open up communication with a young person. They are also useful skills that you can help your mentee develop:

Active Listening

Active listening is an attempt to truly understand the content and emotion of what the other person is saying by paying attention to verbal and non-verbal messages. The task is to focus, hear, respect and communicate your desire to understand. This is not the time to be planning a response or conveying how you feel.

Active listening is not nagging, cajoling, reminding, threatening, criticizing, questioning, advising, evaluating, probing, judging or ridiculing.

Skills to Use:

  • Eye contact
  • Body language: open and relaxed posture, forward lean, appropriate facial expressions, positive use of gestures
  • Verbal cues such as “um-hmmm,” “sure,” “ah” and “yes”

Results of Active Listening:

  • Encourages honesty — helps people free themselves of troublesome feelings by expressing them openly
  • Reduces fear — helps people become less afraid of negative feelings
  • Builds respect and affection
  • Increases acceptance — promotes a feeling of understanding
  • When you actively listen, you cooperate in solving the problem — and in preventing future problems.