Mexican Mentorship Project October 31, 2009
Posted by admin in : Get Involved , trackbackProfessional Mentorship – Community Leadership Project
This project is composed of four different educational subcategories that address critical needs that have been identified within the Mexican community of New York. The goal of each subcategory is to actively reduce the educational gap in this community via the Mexican Mentorship Project with the ultimate goal of promoting equal access to education.
In order to understand its meaning and its purpose and the way it will be implemented in the Mexican community in New York. First let’s study the meaning of “Role Modeling’’. Jeanne J. Speizer describes role models as a”belief in the necessity for role models [that] appears to be based on developmental theories of identification and modeling in childhood, specially, social learning theory and cognitive development theory…a person who ‘possesses skills and display techniques which the actor lacks,…and from whom, by observation and comparison with his own performance the actor can learn.’”[i] Since role modeling is a way development of an identification based on personal skills and personality that will satisfy a necessity of personal inspiration in others. How does “Role Models” will create a positive benefit in the Mexican community? Due to the Mexican community’s lack of professional role models, and the need of learning process by Mexican students, professional role personal role models will promote higher professional aspirations to these individuals that are dropping or doing not satisfactory in school. In my experience as student, role modeling has being a personal dilemma like many other Mexican, Mexican-American students. In most cases when this group of individual does not have parents with college education or professional careers, students’ educational motivation and performance will be affected. Therefore, the idea of having young professional Mexican to be involved in the educational progress of their Mexican fellows who are in lower level of education is important and crucial in order to improve their educational skills as well as their educational performance. As a result, the implementation of our Mexican Mentoship Project will not only benefit the Mexican community but also benefits schools that are lack of carrying out education among minority groups.
What is a Profesional Mentorship?
Professional Mentorship is one of the areas that the Mexican community in New York needs to explore in order to advance in their educational performance. What is a Professional Mentorship? Professional mentorship can be best describe as a programs that promotes education through mentoring students in various subjects and to care of their professional inspirations. According to Jean E. Rhodes, “Mentors appear to affect youth through some combination of support and role modeling…by enhancing social skills and emotional well-being…improving cognitive skills through dialogue and listening…[and] serving as a role model and advocate. Mentors whose influence extends into more than one of these three arenas are likely to have the greatest impact on adolescents’ development [educational performance].”[ii] Due to the importance of promoting higher education among Mexican students who are lack of educational help and motivation in their schools performance at their homes, professional mentorship will fulfill the educational gap of this community. To the much extended, professional mentorship program will be responsible to “encourage the dreams and support their career aspirations of their protégés…to provide opportunities…to observe and participate in their [school] work…”[iii] Therefore, the implementation a mentorship program in the Mexican community is necessary and crucial in order to advance educational performance among Mexican, Mexican-American students.
Mexican Mentorship Project Recruitment: High school internships, college students, young professionals and other positive role models
In order to get this mentorship program implemented, it is necessary to have mentors with the wiliness to help students with low educational performance. One of the first steps is to recruit students that are attending college or have college careers to become mentors for the Role Modeling: Professional Mentorship Base Community Leadership project. These individuals will mentor students from lower level of education, such as high school students, middle school, and elementary school.
Creating a positive, trustworthy, fun and friendly environment
Secondly, these fellows have to create an environment of positivism in educational performance in the Mexican community. At the same time they have to become the role model of these students from lower grades. How these individual will be come role model and how they will motivate their fellows from high schools and elementary schools? First, it is important to create a trusty relationship between mentor and their mentees. The “relationship quality [will be measure] by the degree of closeness; the emotional support provided—the extent to which mentor are ‘always there’ for the protégés and to show them that they care about what happens to them; and the instrumental support—the extent to which mentors help protégés ‘improve at some particular skill’ and feel empowered to ‘take a chance at doing something new.’”[iv]. In order to achieve this goal, mentors need to meet with mentees and they parents in order to create and trusty environment. Follow to the meeting between mentor and mentees and their parents, mentors need to mentor mentees at least once a week between an hour to two hours. Once the relationship has being develop, “mentors can become an enormous asset for low-income youth who may have limited contact with positive role models outside the immediate family and may believe that their opportunities for success are restricted….Mentors can serve as concrete examples of career success, demonstrating qualities that adolescents might wish to emulate.”[v] By creating new professional expectative in the mind of young Mexican, Mexican-American students, these individual will be inspire to do well in school in order to become the first generation of professionals in their own families. At the same time they will share their life experience as Mexican students and the need of having more representation of Mexican students in college.
How to increase the number of Mexican-American students in college
In order to obtain more attendance of Mexican students in college, mentors need to discuss with mentees and to emphasize the importance of a college education. One way to promoting college education among mentees, mentors need to advice mentees of the great opportunities in life with a college education. The most important, mentors must persuade these individual that college education is also for Mexicans. According to Smith, most Mexican lack of inspiration and information regarding college education. Therefore, mentors of MASA (Mexican American Students Alliance) in coordination with MEXED (Mexican Education Foundation of New York) will coordinate college outreaching in conjunction with CUNY (City University of New York) and the Mexican Consulate and other community groups in order to promote college education among Mexican students. Each mentor will be responsible to persuade mentees and to help them to apply to college. All mentors will be train through college workshops by CUNY, MASA, and MEXED in order to answer questions regarding of the many college opportunities in CUNY and other private colleges and share scholarship information with their mentees. It is important that these students will develop a self consciousness of the importance of having professional careers and change their community’s political, economical, social, and educational representation.
How to help parents to get involved with their son’s and daughter’s education
Having a mentorship program that only helps student’s educational performance is not enough, educating and improving parent’s educational level is vital to the improvement of the educational functioning of these individual in New York. Therefore, MASA has implemented in its educational program course of English as a second language (ESL) concentrated on helping and assisting them with a full understanding the value of higher education and homework material for the parents. This course will be concentrated in improving their English skills and to teach them how to help their children’s homework. At the same time, these courses will provide parents with the opportunity to share more time with their children and learn more about their educational interest. The purpose of implementing ESL courses in our mentorship program is to provide parents with the sufficient tools to advance in their education as well as their children and to become the role models of the family.
Mexican Mentorship Project: Base Community
Furthermore, in the concept of “Base Community”, the mentorship program will be implemented in community center, churches, students clubs, and high schools. One of the advantages of having this mentorship program at community centers, high schools, and churches is the trust that these centers provide to the Mexican community. According to Rhodes “churches and church-based programs [are] significant protective factors in the lives of urban youth….Since religious communities and be a source of strength to many adolescents, partnerships aimed at supporting the development of youth….”[vi] Analyzing the strong relationship that exist already in the Mexican community with the church, MASA currently provides a mentorship project at St. Pius V Catholic church entitled “Mexican Mentorship Project”, in which more that thirty-five students are mentored three days a week and more than 20 parents are enrolled in our ESL based homework aid program. This mentorship program consists on mentoring students from 1er grade to 12th grade in areas of Math, English writing and Reading and Science, as well as preparation of the PSAT and SAT and civic and cultural awareness in order to form a new generation of responsible citizens that care about social issues. This educational program will serve as a base community educational respond to prevent Mexican students from dropping out of school. Base on the results of an intensive research that myself and mentor coordinators will conduct in order to measure their progress of the students as well as the program, the following step is to expand this program to other community centers and churches with available space.
Implementation of the “Mexican Mentorship Project”
The implementation of mentorship programs in various churches in the most poorest neighborhoods in New York were Mexicans are concentrated, it will help to create a strong relationship with Mexican students that needs mentor help and at the same time will improve the educational performance. In order to have positive results, the mentorship programs in these locations have to be monitor and study their development in order to keep a track of its progress. Each center needs to have a program coordinator that will keep record of student attendance and their progress. At the same time, the program mentorship coordinator will interview parents and schools teachers in order to understand the need of each student and to be able to provide the right mentorship. Furthermore, all mentorship programs will have no cost and mentors will be asked to donate their time. One of the reasons why many Mexican students do not obtain professional mentorship, because it is costly and parents could not effort it. Another reason is that most Mexican students feel intimidated to go to mentorship programs out of their ethnic group, they think they are going to make fun of them, or they going to be considerer them as not intelligent. Although, the idea is to have mentors with Mexican or Hispanic background and other, it is also important to allow Mexican students to be exposed to other mentors from different ethnic background in order to reduce their concept of inferiority. Mentorship programs in churches and Mexican community centers will minimize Mexican student’s fear of inferiority, due to the strong relationship already formed with these institutions. For parents and student, having a free mentorship program within the community will increase the number of attendance of Mexican students to these programs and will reduce the educational gap with others ethnic groups.
Mexican Mentoship Project: Civic and cultural awareness-based leadership
Having mentorship programs and role models in the Mexican community is not enough, it is necessary to promote cultural and civic awareness that will empower a future generation of active and involved citizens and promote equal access to education and to form a base student’s leadership based on activism. The Mexican community is one of the largest minority groups that lack of political representation due to the lack of legal status of a large percentage of this community. It is important to promote awareness of those students who were born in the USA and have USA citizenship to be organized and speak in behalf of those who do not have legal status. By teaching and training students to become political role models of the community, these individual will be involve in local and national activist campaigns. In order to do create awareness of community leadership, MASA is setting workshops of community’s activist leadership that give the sufficient tools to work in their schools and community and to promote higher education. It is also important that this individual get involve in voting registration in the Mexican-American community. Thus, these individual will have more political power to demand better educational access for their community. For example, in 2001 MASA worked in a political student’s activist campaign to reinstate the In-State-Tuition at CUNY. Most of these individuals who participated in the many protests, hunger strike and lobbying for the New York State law that gives the opportunity to undocumented students to attend CUNY and SUNY (State University of New York), have became the community’s role models that work hard to promote equal access to higher education and educational awareness to youth students.
As a consequence of a long struggle by the Mexican community in acquiring equal opportunity to a good education and the many social, economical, political, and cultural problems, the Mexican community faces one of the lowest academicals achievements especially in New York. Therefore, it is important to understand the historical educational segregation experienced by this community prior and after the Brown’s Supreme Court decision. In addition, this community has experienced a negative effect in educational performance due to an influx of immigration in earliest 1990 with lower levels of education that have affected 1.5 and 2nd generation of Mexican in the United States. For that reason, many scholars have conducted extensive researches and developed theories in order to prevent students from dropping out or not doing well in school. Many of these researches and theories had a positive impact in the Mexican community in many states in the United States. However, in the case of New York, this community is experienced on of the lowest educational performance comparing to other minority ethnic groups. Therefore, I have develop a new theory such as “Role Modeling: Professional Mentorship Base Community Leadership Project” that will provide the sufficient tools to this community in order to achieve better educational performance. This theory is divided into four subcategories in areas of educational need in the Mexican community. At the same time, this theory will promote access to higher education in this community with a better understanding of their problems from the personal perspective of a Mexican student struggling to achieve a college career.
[i] Speizer, Jeanne J. “Role Models, Mentors, and Sponsors: The Elusive Concepts.” Signs, Vol. 6, No. 4 Summer, 1981. pg. 693.
[ii] Rhodes, Jean E. Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. pg. 35.
[iii] Wright Cheryl A. and Wright Scott D. “The Role of Mentors in the Career Development of Young Professionals.” Family Relations, Vol. 36, No. 2 April 1987, pg. 204.
[iv] Rhodes, Jean E. Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. pg. 90.
[v] Rhodes, Jean E. Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. pg. 45.
[vi] Rhodes, Jean E. Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. pg. 121.
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