Entries by Tim Cavell

A Fable About Mentoring and How to Be Close with Those We Love

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By Dr. Tim Cavell In a study done over 30 years ago, researchers pulled first graders from different classrooms and had them interact together in a new playgroup several days in a row. Selected were children who well liked by classmates and children who were actively disliked. Also in the playgroups were children who were […]

CareGiver-Initiated Mentoring (CG-IM): Pushing the Envelope on Parent Involvement

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Written by Timothy A. Cavell, PhD Professor J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences Department of Psychological Science University of Arkansas Three years ago, I had the good fortune of being in Boston for a symposium on mentoring research co-sponsored by Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) of Canada, MENTOR, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Our […]

Good Enough Mentors

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by Timothy Cavell   In the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Youth Mentoring (DuBois & Karcher, 2013), Chris Elledge and I (Cavell & Elledge, 2013) offered this definition of youth mentoring: Youth men­toring is the practice of using program-sponsored relationships between identified youth and older volunteers (or paraprofessionals) as a context for prevention-focused activities […]

Does your program serve military-connected youth? If so, researchers need your help!

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Does your program serve military-connected youth – those with a parent in the military, National Guard, or Reserve? If so, we need your help in conducting a survey of mentoring program practices. A team of researchers (see below) is developing a model by which schools can provide supportive, school-based mentoring to military-connected students in the elementary school […]

Mentoring Youth of Incarcerated Parents: My Experience Volunteering at Big Brothers Big Sisters

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Associate editor’s Note: The following article by Dr. Tim Cavell was originally published on The Huffington Post and is republished with permission of the author. In the recent past, The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring has published content exploring how children of incarcerated parents can benefit from a caring adult mentor. We learned from The Rev. Dr. W. […]

Mentoring Programs for Children of Military Families

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by Tim Cavell, Ph.D. About five years ago, I approached some colleagues with the idea that school-based mentoring (SBM) was a good fit for children from military families. Researchers were learning that multiple and prolonged combat deployments were having significant and negative effects on military children and families. We reasoned that pairing military children with […]

Mentors as Shepherds

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by Tim Cavell, Ph.D. Nearly 15 years ago, I submitted a grant proposal for a mentoring study that wasn’t funded. Soon after, I switched faculty positions and the idea behind the study was set aside. These days I think a lot about that idea and its approach to mentoring. The idea was this: Youth at […]

Teen mentors: The story from Canada

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by Tim Cavell, Ph.D. Last month I had the good fortune of speaking at Canada’s National Mentoring Symposium in beautiful Banff, Alberta. The event was partly a celebration of BBBS-Canada’s 100th anniversary. My talk was about a couple of small studies that involved teen mentors in Canada. The studies were open trials, meaning there was […]