Mentoring expert, Bernadette Sánchez, discusses some of the challenges of field of mentoring

Experts’ Corner: Mentoring in the era of COVID-19

From the ‘Mentoring in the era of COVID-19: Nine experts in the field weigh in’ article by Justin Preston and Monica Arkin

Dr. Bernadette Sánchez, Professor of Community Psychology at DePaul University. According to Dr. Sanchez, this focus on a general “field of mentoring,” so to speak, could be linked to another challenge that has troubled mentoring programs, researchers, and advocates: A laser-like focus on the individual mentee or mentoring relationship that tends not to account for broader factors and influences that affect us all. “The biggest challenge that our field was facing prior to 2020 (and still is) is that we focused heavily on how mentoring affects youth outcomes without enough or much consideration of the youth’s context or the mentor’s experience in the process and what mentors are getting out of mentoring,”.