Critical Mentoring

by Torie Weiston-Serdan, Torie Weiston-Serdan

This book introduces the concept of critical mentoring, presenting its theoretical and empirical foundations, and providing telling examples of what it looks like in practice, and what it can achieve. At this juncture when the demographics of our schools and colleges are rapidly changing, critical mentoring provides mentors with a new and essential transformational practice that challenges deficit-based notions of protégés, questions their forced adaptation to dominant ideology, counters the marginalization and minoritization of young people of color, and endows them with voice, power and choice to achieve in society while validating their culture and values.Critical mentoring places youth at the center of the process, challenging norms of adult and institutional authority and notions of saviorism to create collaborative partnerships with youth and communities that recognize there are multiple sources of expertise and knowledge. Torie Weiston-Serdan outlines the underlying foundations of critical race theory, cultural competence and intersectionality, describes how collaborative mentoring works in practice in terms of dispositions and structures, and addresses the implications of rethinking about the purposes and delivery of mentoring services, both for mentors themselves and the organizations for which they work. Each chapter ends with a set of salient questions to ask and key actions to take. These are meant to move the reader from thought to action and provide a basis for discussion.This book offers strategies that are immediately applicable and will create a process that is participatory, emancipatory and transformative.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education

128 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2017

Reviews

[CTEP]

The new Createch supervisor loaned this book to me, and says she recommends it to everyone who works with youth.

This text is part narrative, part research-paper, and part guide; it is entirely a call to action. In this work, the author introduces the concept of "critical mentoring" in regards to youth and youth work. She talks about her own experience as a mentor with various programs throughout the years, and the ways in which traditional mentoring programs can fail the youth that they serve. This work pulls from various theoretical and empirical sources, breaking down and highlighting studies and statistics. Although there are six main chapters in the book, I think her message can be (very very roughly) boiled down to three parts:

Nothing about us, without us:
Weiston-Serdan writes at great length about the importance of including youth in the process of youth programming and mentorship. Much of this is detailing her own experience with her protégés - note that she does not say mentees, as that implies deficiency - and how she learned to understand the deficiency in standard mentoring styles. She emphasizes that not only can youth be equally as able to contribute to important discussions and decisions as adults, sometimes they are better suited. Youth can have smarter, more creative, more nuanced ideas than any adult in the room, and they need to have a seat at the table.
Intersectionality:
No text about youth work, especially when the youth are majority youth of color, would be complete without a discussion of race, gender, sexuality, culture, etc. - and how they all intersect. One study Weiston-Serdan mentioned showed that both white and black youth benefited from a black mentor. For the black youth, having someone who understood their cultural context greatly helped the mentor's ability to help them. For white youth, cross-cultural experience helped them as well. (Of course, this is a summary of a summary, so please look at the original work for a better understanding). Weiston-Serdan also wrote about LGBTQQ youth and how, initially, she failed to intentionally and explicitly include that identity into her work, even as a queer woman.
Youth Centrism
This was the point that stuck out most to me. The idea seems simple - create programming and support around what youth say they need, not what you think they need. Program goals, measurements, strategic planning, visions: all of this should be centered on the youth. Not the adults, not the adults' funders, but the youth.
Although this text had a lot of good and important things to say, it was very difficult to read. This is basically a textbook and I struggled. The back of each chapter has "Questions to Ask" and "Actions to Take," and I think that these are a valuable and more accessible jumping-off point.

This relates to my service because youth mentoring is my role at Createch. While this work is specifically youth-targeted, there are some interesting points especially regarding race and culture that could be of value to anyone in the CTEP program. However, it is those who work with youth who would get the most out of it. I would recommend taking it slowly if you do choose to read it.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The next generation is always society’s most important resource, so it follows that mentoring youth is an important activity. The author Weiston-Serdan leads a non-profit network of youth mentors in Southern California. She encounters situations where mentors have to unpack social baggage that can hold youth back – issues like race, gender, class, and sexuality. These issues are often classified under the label of critical theory, issues where power relationships can exist. Therefore, her message seeks to liberate youth through education that they may choose a beneficial future for themselves. She ultimately hopes to encourage aspirations like attending college to gain practical skills for a better life and to help others.

Weison-Serdan’s aims are certainly in the right direction. Her goals are exactly what is needed and what I hope to accomplish personally when I mentor youth. She identifies the right issues that often hold people back. She rightly points out that the intersectionality of these issues can combine to hold back many individuals. Simply being black or a lesbian is relatively easy to guide. But in reality, most youth encounter multiple issues – being a black lesbian from an impoverished background. Those multiples require more careful parsing of how to deal with life.

This book, however, does seem to have some foundational limitations. It’s very short, and it deals with its topic at a very high level. It labels itself as “practical,” but it contains an abundance of theory. I want to hear more stories and more qualitative data showing how these principles operate. At times, it accomplishes this, but most of the time, it just stays in abstractions. It needs to be double the size (to 230 pages, say) with anonymized stories showing how this works. At that length, it would still not be too long.

After this book has been published in 2017, one of its topics (critical race theory) has entered into most American households. This book does not politicize the issue (as television commentators have since), but rather shows how this thread traces through so many Americans’ experiences. As such, it does provide a good, solid, apolitical introduction to the issue that shows that critical race theory possesses nothing to fear.

This book hopes to hit the market of youth mentors. That’s not a huge market, but there aren’t a ton of books that look at mentoring in depth. The theoretical perspective it offers is needed, but it needs to be supplemented by everyday stories, especially since it’s marketed as “practical.” As this book correctly asserts, mentoring requires some degree of training to avoid a “white savior” syndrome and unhealthy power dynamics. This book can help mentors equip themselves to help their mentees (or “protegés,” in this book’s vocabulary). It’s short and accessible. I’d just like to see less telling and more showing how this theory gets fleshed out.

[Joseph Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle should be, "do no harm". I think it had good advice on how you really think about how the organization really serves the students. Practical. The only qualm is some of the philosophy which seems to be based in power-struggle (Marxist) that practically can Rob people of their sense of responsibility for themselves. As a practicioner in this field for two years, I know that giving young people of color more ownership, and responsibility of their decisions (since they often feel powerless due to their age and circumstances) that this re-ordering around the authority of their own choices and the 'power' ( really competence) that this gives them to navigate their world through critical reflection and action is that gives them the confidence and true freedom to be successful in the world. Not tearing others down or blaming me for their own failures on some hypothetical evil power structure. I think this creates rebels not heros.

[Vi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Dr. Weiston-Serdan speak at a conference and had to pick up her book. With that being said this book just scratches at the surface of what is to be done in the field of mentoring. I was hoping for more concrete tools to use but this book is more a primer for integrating social justice and critical race theory concepts into mentoring programs. If you’re more familiar and well-versed in critical theory this book may not be enough, but it still proposed many great questions. Highly recommended for those unfamiliar with social justice work.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book to prepare for a new staff-driven mentorship program I'm helping create at my work. I would highly recommend to any professional who would like to think about critical ways of looking at equity in mentorship. Even though it wasn't written specifically for my audience, I liked this book a lot and have since used it as a reference guide.

[Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though this book was more targeted towards leaders of mentoring programs rather than mentors themselves, there were still bits of information and knowledge that I was able to take away.

[Beth Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a piece of this book a few years ago and I could barely comprehend it. I wasn’t ready to read it yet. This has happened to me with other books and it’s a great reminder to re-read more books. Reading the whole thing this time I realized how valuable this book is. Written by a black woman, it’s about mentoring through a lens of intersectionality and critical race theory. This book flips the deficit based assumption that most mentor ship programs work from pertaining to their mentees, and argues for a more inclusive equity based partnership that centers young people. I was reading this for guidance on a new peer mentorship program I helped design at CSU that involves mainly marginalized students but of you’re doing any kind of mentoring, you should read this book.