On Monday I hosted another Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago. This was the 40th in the past 20 years. I'm still going through attendance information, evaluations, etc. but it looks like about 105 attended.
One participant, Changyue An, is a graduate student from IIT in Chicago. Here's some information he shared from a workshop titled "Mentoring Urban Youth"
1. Two important principles we must remember
- Young people do not see what you see.
- If they are gangs, you must see them as individuals.
2. The Approach to be a good tutor/mentor
- What you see might not be what others see.
- What you experience plays an important factor on how you react and handle situations.
- Gained knowledge allows you to make certain judgments about situations and/or people.
3. Build Methodology-Relationship Building
- Diversity
- Respect
- Open & Honest Communication
- Trust
- Teamwork
4. M&M’s-another way to be a good tutor/mentor
- Meet youth where they are at
- Make a connection
- Master their needs and interests
- Maintain positive relationship
- Manage their trust
- Motivate them to positive programs
If any of you attended the same workshop, please add your own thoughts. If you would like to post a review of other workshops you attended, or of the overall conference, I encourage you to do that, too.
In the Groups section of the forum one sub group shows interns from universities working with me every six months to create strategy visualizations. In this album, and this album, you can see photos from previous conferences, which were taken by interns who attended those.
These illustrate roles young people can take as intermediaries, and communicators, using their own skills to draw attention to events, activities and ideas. Youth from many schools could be doing this and the result would be greater attention for social issues like tutoring/mentoring of youth, and a greater flow of resources from those who could help tutor/mentor programs operate in different cities.
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