{"id":143,"date":"2013-10-22T02:38:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T02:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/?post_type=featured_articles&p=143"},"modified":"2015-01-28T15:05:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T23:05:30","slug":"why-mentors-are-critical-to-youmedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/blog\/why-mentors-are-critical-to-youmedia\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mentors Are Critical to YOUmedia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The success of a\u00a0Learning Lab<\/a>\u00a0environment turns on effective mentoring. As evident in the three-year evaluation report of Chicago\u2019s\u00a0YOUmedia<\/a>, relatable mentors are the linchpin in teen engagement. But why?<\/p>\n

Ten\u00e9 Gray<\/a>, director of Chicago\u2019s\u00a0Digital Youth Network<\/a>\u00a0(DYN), the prototype for Chicago\u2019s YOUmedia, and\u00a0K-Fai Steele<\/a>, teen programming specialist at the\u00a0Free Library of Philadelphia<\/a>, a Learning Lab, explained why finding the right mentor is so important.<\/p>\n

\u201cMentors are on the front lines of our programming,\u201d said Steele. \u201cThey\u2019re the ones who are responsible for getting kids to articulate their own interests. Mentors have insight into kids\u2019 mental processes. They have to pick up on cues, and make something productive out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mentors, said Gray, have a dynamic role, and serve a purpose that is quite different from a parent or teacher. They help teens connect the dots and recognize those moments when they can help youth dig deeper into their interests. Gray said, \u201cMentors help youth answer questions like, \u2018Why do I create?\u2019 and \u2018Who do I want to be?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Learning Labs, mentors are integral to the program. Often experts in their own fields, they help teens identify new interests, nudge them to expand their horizons, and offer them access to new people and resources.<\/p>\n

The role of mentors has been an evolving one at YOUmedia and Learning Labs. Drawing cues from early experiences at DYN and YOUmedia in Chicago, Labs are nudging not only teens, but also adults to re-envision their roles in the spaces. Librarians are no longer focused solely on providing resources. They become educators as well. Art directors must step back and realize that their art expertise is only has helpful to a teen when he or she needs it to realize his or her own ideas. Mentors in museums might have to step back from a fully geeked out mode and start from where the teen is. And mentors who love to plan lessons ahead of time and follow a schedule will definitely have to learn to give up that control in favor of encouraging teens to design the programs they want to see.<\/p>\n

As Taylor Bayless, a lead mentor at YOUmedia Chicago, put it in\u00a0a recent video<\/a>, \u201cIn the past I\u2019d had more of the teacher experience, where you stand up in front of a class and have a curriculum, week 1,2,3,4,5, and you teach it. With this program, it evolves and I can\u2019t anticipate what\u2019s going to happen, who\u2019s going to show up on a given day. So I had to shift my thinking on how to really engage the students.\u201d<\/p>\n

She let go of her preconceptions of what a workshop on critiquing video games in a weekly podcast should be and let the teens take the program where they wanted it to go. Their level of involvement shattered her perceptions of teen gamers. \u201cI had the stereotypical narrow view of how teens thought about video games and how they played video games.\u201d But, she said, they dove into topics like feminism and depictions of women in video games and took the discussion to areas she never thought they would, mainly because they had taken ownership of the program and, with her help, had seen new avenues of critique to pursue.<\/p>\n

Mentors are also changing how the organizations view curricula and teen involvement. \u201cI have an artist background and I think about how interesting it is when you bring an artist into a library setting,\u201d said Steele, creating an interesting juxtaposition. In many ways, the meshing of different sensibilities and cultures, like artist and resource-driven library environments, pushes everyone to expand their boundaries.<\/p>\n

Mentors with credentials in game design or music production add another element.<\/p>\n

When mentors have a personal portfolio of their own work, says Gray, \u201cit builds social capital. Kids trust you because you are who you say you are. It also allows for both parties to critique each other\u2019s work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building \u201csocial capital\u201d means not only bringing one\u2019s own portfolio to the table but also understanding \u201cwhat youth bring to the table and the ways mentors can learn from it,\u201d says Gray.<\/p>\n

\u201cMentors must be connected to popular culture to some extent. It helps if kids can say, \u2018You care about what I listen to, and about what matters to me.\u2019 They need to know what youth are geeking out about. As a mentor, you can help that development,\u201d she said. \u201cThey also must have an understanding for where kids are developmentally, culturally, socially, and personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when it comes down to it, versatility and self-motivation are also critical traits. \u201cI need someone who can change the activity if it\u2019s not working,\u201d said Steele<\/p>\n

In the end, it pays to take the time to find the right mentors because mentors are critical to the success of the program and the growth of teens themselves. Researchers from the\u00a0Carsey Institute<\/a>\u00a0at the University of New Hampshire, for example, find that across the board, mentorship positively affected school engagement. Students who had a mentor figure in their life had greater self-confidence, enjoyed academics more, and believed themselves to be more likely to graduate from college than those without mentors.<\/p>\n

Researchers from the University of Chicago\u00a0found similar results<\/a>\u00a0at the YOUmedia at Howard Washington Library. \u201cRelationships, particularly between youth and adult staff members, are crucially important in engaging teens toward productive growth,\u201d\u00a0they wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research by\u00a0Jean E. Rhodes<\/a>, editor of\u00a0The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring<\/a>,\u201d has long documented the benefits of relatable mentors. \u201cStaff can serve as concrete models of success, demonstrating qualities that the youth might wish to emulate and offering training and information about the necessary steps to achieve various goals,\u201d\u00a0wrote Rhodes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Steele witnessed a shift in thinking about mentors after Learning Lab coordinators met in Washington, D.C. last January. \u201cIt felt like everyone was echoing each other about the importance of hiring the right mentors\u2014because it\u2019s true.\u201d Now, said Steele, \u201cWe need to support them and find ways to tie the programming to their individual interests. It\u2019s a really tricky job to figure out how to help each mentor flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to ensuring a mentor\u2019s personal growth, Gray and her peers at DYN are working to widen the traditional meaning of \u201cmentorship\u201d and to think more deeply about the alternative kinds of mentors for youth, both on and offline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about people in afterschool spaces, or even security guards,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re working to broaden this definition of mentors, but also understanding that they all play a different role.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broadening the concept of \u201cmentor\u201d is something that founder of the DYN Nichole Pinkard touched on in a\u00a0recent interview<\/a>\u00a0with the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. Pinkard suggests we should be rethinking the traditional relationship between mentor and mentee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to figure out how to get rid of some of our expectations around who can connect to whom,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason why a kid couldn\u2019t be a mentor to an adult and vice versa around a shared passion or interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor do mentors have to be long-term connections. Pinkard suggests that short-term mentorship can be just as valuable as something more consistent or long-term. \u201cI might be your mentor for just the next 40 minutes. \u2026 We can\u2019t assume all mentoring opportunities will be lifetime connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether long-term or short, these things are certain: mentoring in YOUmedia and Learning Labs is critical to youth and the success of the spaces, and the role of mentors will continue to evolve and grow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo\/DYN Photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The success of a\u00a0Learning Lab\u00a0environment turns on effective mentoring. As evident in the three-year evaluation report of Chicago\u2019s\u00a0YOUmedia, relatable mentors are the linchpin in teen engagement. But why? Ten\u00e9 Gray, director of Chicago\u2019s\u00a0Digital Youth Network\u00a0(DYN), the prototype for Chicago\u2019s YOUmedia, and\u00a0K-Fai Steele, teen programming specialist at the\u00a0Free Library of Philadelphia, a Learning Lab, explained why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":916,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}