Posts

Big Brother Aids Youth With Big Steps: Mentor for 12-Year-Old Puts Priority on School Work

by Ralph Gardner, Jr. Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15 2014 When the Times Square area was suggested as a place to meet Fernando Luciano and Erik Lopez, I was surprised. I would have assumed that the challenge for 34-year-old Mr. Luciano would be to keep Erik, 12, as far away from Times Square—even the new […]

Mentoring Youth at High Risk: The Perspectives of Professional Mentors

By Davielle Lakind, J. Mark Eddy, & Adrienne Zel Abstract or article Excerpted From Child Youth Care Forum (2014) 43:705–727 DOI 10.1007/s10566-014-9261-2 Background Youth mentoring programs rely largely on volunteers, but youth facing significant risks may be poor candidates for volunteer-based interventions. Full-time ‘‘professional’’ mentors in highly structured programs may be better suited to partner effectively with such youth and […]

President Obama urges adults to mentor black and Hispanic boys

The call for mentors is the first action from the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the goal of which is to expand educational and economic opportunity for young men of color By Maya Rhoda @mrhodan, Time.com The call for mentors is a part of a series of initial recommendations being released by the My Brother’s Keeper […]

Evidence Of Racial, Gender Biases Found In Faculty Mentoring

Editor’s note: As the field embraces Youth Initiated Mentoring, it will be important to consider that female mentees and youth of color may face additional burdens to finding a responsive mentor.  by SHANKAR VEDANTAM (NPR) Research found faculty in academic departments linked to more lucrative professions are more likely to discriminate against women and minorities than faculty […]

How an Innovative Youth Program is Tackling Mass Incarceration

By DAX-DEVLON ROSS Nine years ago Molly Baldwin found herself in a curious position. Roca, the teenage pregnancy and violence prevention program she’d founded in her 20s, had a multimillion-dollar budget, a two-story building in downtown Chelsea, Mass., a portfolio of programs addressing everything from poverty to immigrant rights and a measure of fame for using Native […]

On Being Our Brother’s Keeper

by John Bridgeland, CEO, Civic Enterprises and Melody Barnes, Director, White House Domestic Policy Council A former gang member and high school dropout, James Mackey is the kind of kid most of us feared and too many ignored. If we paid any attention to James, we thought he would never be a contributing member of society and […]

Social Media, Youth Mentoring: Tools to Fight Urban Violence

 From Huffington Post Print Article In many countries across the Global South, urban centers are also centers of crime and violence. This can take many shapes: gang violence, sexual assault, petty theft, drug trafficking, domestic violence, human trafficking… Coupled with extreme social and economic inequality, rapid urbanization, and a young population, crime takes off and thrives, […]

Stanford University study shows that lower achieving students are assigned less experienced teachers

Rachel OBrien-Stanford STANFORD (US) — A study of a major urban school district reveals that high-achieving students tend to get the best teachers, leaving others to less experienced instructors. Even within the same school, lower-achieving students often are taught by less-experienced teachers, as well as by teachers who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges, according […]

Intensive Small-Group Tutoring and Counseling Helps Struggling Students

 Editors Note: This is a very encouraging study, summarized in the New York Times, about the power of tutors and mentors to help struggling students. CHICAGO — By the time they reach eighth grade, according to federal tests, half of all African-American schoolboys have not mastered the most basic math skills that educators consider essential […]

★ Professor Nichole Pinkard

Rethinking Mentorship, Learning Pathways in a Networked Age A Few Moments with Nichole Pinkard, Visiting Associate Professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University from the Digital Media and Youth Hub   As founder of the Digital Youth Network, a digital literacy program for Chicago youth that incorporates both in-school and […]