Mentorship as Love 1

Livie Jacobs
Teaching and Social Change
Professor Madden
May 10, 2017
Mentorship as Love
Unconditional love is revolutionary. It’s the kind of love no argument, diagnosis,

achievement, or loss can destroy. I am fortunate enough to have found unconditional love

throughout my life, often within the relationships I formed with mentors. I am one of the lucky

few as one in three young people do not have a mentor today. That means one in three do not

have somebody to guide them through tough times, to celebrate their successes with them, to

provide hope for what the future holds. Youth need these relationships as a foundation off of

which they can jump into the world of adulthood. There is a great need to help youth lay this

foundation. This paper will explore the idea of youth mentorship as an expression of

unconditional love, drawing from the successes of specific mentoring programs, Thread of

Maryland and Blossom of New York City, as well as my own experiences growing up.

I was raised on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation destination for most, but a

tight-knit community for those living there year-round. Throughout my 18 years, I have formed

strong connections with strong women. Some connections overlapped, while others faded away

as I grew older, but I was never without a confidante. I like to think I am who I am today because

of the work of these strong women. I was never in a formal program like Big Brothers Big

Sisters; life just seemed to put the right individuals in front of me when I needed it most.

Regardless, I have experienced mentorship in its purest form, so full of love, day in and day out.

It’s a practice close to my heart. I found this love within my mom, my Kindergarten teacher, my

weekly babysitter, the mom of the kids I babysat, my piano teacher, my high school counselor,
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my strong-willed peer, a favorite English teacher, and the professor who asked me how I was

feeling. I’m a strong woman myself because of them; I have the power to pass down this love to

the next generation of strong girls, and I am on a mission to do just that both as a mentor and as a

proponent of programs that match youth with stable, supportive mentors. I came from a White

upper middle-class household and am privileged to have had great educational opportunities

throughout my life. I would never have been labelled ‘at-risk’ because of my high-achieving,

driven nature, but my teenage years were not without tumult. Although this paper will focus

specifically on programs that help youth who are in academic or criminal trouble, I believe every

young person needs a mentor, regardless of their perceived successes. As a future educator and

counselor, it is worthwhile to brainstorm ways in which mentorship can affect, or be integrated

into, the school environment.

Mentorship is not a modern practice. In fact, it has quite the history. The word mentor,

meaning ‘wise advisor’ has its roots in a character in Homer’s ​Odyssey, ​who helped guide

Odysseus on his journey. According to professor of lifelong learning, Helen Colley, the social

meaning of mentorship has evolved over time. It began with the Homeric stage, in which

mentorship served to perpetuate the power of those already in power, maintaining the patriarchy

of ancient Greece. Next came the classical stage. Mentoring became like parenting in academia,

as shown by the relationship between Socrates and Plato. Mentorship continued to be a device to

maintain the authority of the dominant class until the Victorian ages, in which members of the

dominant class began mentoring members of the oppressed class. Modern practices of

mentorship reveal a new trend: the oppressed are increasingly mentoring the oppressed. This

could indicate a collective push to level out pervasive inequality (Colley, 2000). This new sort of
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mentorship is based on empowered people empowering younger people. Often times, mentors

know what it’s like to be in the shoes of their mentee, perhaps having experienced a similar

homelife or emotional struggle at a different time. When prior mentees become mentors, it helps

the entire community as knowledge and support are passed down to the next generation.

Mentorship in modern times can also be found in the classroom. Pedagogy, a more concrete form

of mentorship, can center around the same notion of love that I imagine mentoring to have. In

Silvia Toscano Villanueva’s work “Teaching as a Healing Craft,” the idea of “love as an

interventionist teaching methodology” is introduced. For Villanueva, this idea comes from a

passage from a Spanish poem, “You are my other me/If I do harm to you, I do harm to myself”

which sounds like a slightly different version of the Golden rule posted on most Kindergarten

classroom walls, ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. I believe Villanueva’s idea is the

path forward in education. Students need support in order to thrive in the classroom, and it is the

educator’s job to create an environment that allows them to receive that support. Although this

paper will focus on mentorship programs occurring outside of the mentee’s school, I believe

educators are crucial for laying the foundation for mentorship within the classroom.

Because mentorship has meant so many different things over the last few centuries, I seek

to define it for the purpose of this paper. I believe mentorship is the relationship between two

people, one of which is older than the other or farther along in their journey. Within this

relationship, there is unconditional love, trust, and respect. While this love and trust may not be

reciprocal at first, the relationship is characterized by its unfailing steadiness. The mentor does

not walk out of the mentee’s life when he or she sees fit. The mentor fills the role of parent,

friend, and/or confidante, depending on the context of the situation.

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As it turns out, I’m not the only one with that definition of a mentor. The Blossom

Program for Girls’ Empowerment is a New York City-based program founded in the late 1990s,

focuses on providing girls who are in trouble with a safe space and solid mentors. Blossom is

also a program that organizes after-school, weekend and summer tutoring, mentoring,

workshops, recreation, trips, counseling and other services to the girls (Shelby, 2002).

Accordingly, Blossom offers so many activities and opportunities for the girls to engage in.

Imagine a girl who has spent her life in and out of foster care and is currently struggling with

drug addiction, only to be invited on a Blossom camping trip to the mountains. It might be

difficult for somebody so accustomed to the troubled lifestyle to take this risk, but that’s why

Blossom has counselors on hand to help talk her through the transition. If she can be convinced

to go, imagine the radical shift of environment she will encounter, the skills she will learn, the

connections she could make.

The exceptional thing about Blossom is that it casts a wide net in terms of educating these

girls and providing them with a variety of resources. Blossom goes beyond traditional learning

(homework help/tutoring) by helping girls learn life skills such as finding a job, creating a social

network, or learning to be vulnerable. It seems as though there is a resource for every girl who

walks through the door. The academic help partnered with the mentorship can have a big impact:

the National Mentoring Partnership found that “young people who had mentors report setting

higher educational goals and are more likely to attend college than those without mentors”

(Bruce, 2014). In addition, each girl who enters the program designs her own plans for a

successful future by articulating her wants and needs with the help of Blossom staff (Shelby,

2002). This sort of self-directed learning strikes me as revolutionary. A girl is given the
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opportunity to think hard about what she can accomplish, hopefully instilling a sense of purpose

and personal accountability which are both needed for academic success. The girls simply need

encouragement and hope for what they can become in order to begin to imagine their own future

plans. That’s where the mentoring comes in.

Activist Monique Morris’s book ​Pushout ​explores the lives of African American girls’

experiences in school and the criminal justice system; in one chapter, Morris highlights Blossom

and tells the remarkable story of a girl whose life was transformed by her mentor in the program:

Juanita had been in trouble with the criminal justice system over and over, but “Blossom

counselors and mentors were ultimately able to convince [her] that if she wanted to

experience a life where she was not on probation or under other forms of surveillance

from the criminal legal system, she would need to make different decisions--and they were

committed to seeing her through it. Her mentor, Davina, made it a personal goal to help

Juanita make new meaning of her life. They became so close that Juanita spent most

afternoons after school working for Davina; if she was having trouble at home, she could

find refuge at Davina’s house. Though trauma and mental illness propelled Juanita toward

contact with the criminal legal system, these conditions have not dealt a fatal blow to her

future” (Morris, 2014).

Juanita was provided the support and resources she needed, thanks to Blossom. She was

ultimately steered toward mental health resources, diagnosed with and treated for bipolar

disorder, and paired with Davina, her mentor. It is interesting to read Morris’s phrasing of

Blossom mentors needing to ‘convince’ Juanita that she ‘needs to make different decisions’. This

is helpful in understanding that good mentorship is not always hugs and cliche motivational
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phrases; rather, it can and should be tough work sometimes for both the mentor and mentee. It

must have taken a while for Juanita to gain Davina’s trust, and to take her words of advice

seriously. The ways in which a mentor gains this trust is different for every mentoring

relationship. The mentor needs to tailor his or her approach to the mentee. Perhaps Juanita

needed someone to sit her down and help her face reality: her future was bleak if she continued

down this path...it was time to make a change. Other youth may need a softer approach, perhaps

just the question, ‘Can I help you?’ or ‘I’m here’ to help them open up. The other part of gaining

trust comes in the form of unrelenting support and commitment: Davina made it her ‘personal

goal’ to help Juanita. With this in mind, Juanita would know she had a partner in the battle she

was about to wage with her old way of life. Not only did Davina commit to helping Juanita, she

bravely allowed her life to become entwined with Juanita’s by allowing Juanita into her home

when she needed. For Davina, this blurs the line between work life and personal life, but that

blur is what makes for an even more vulnerable relationship between the two women. This sort

of support is what I define as mentoring as an act of love. Juanita had found hope. Instead of

sitting in a concrete juvenile hall holding cell right now, I like to imagine her laying on Davina’s

couch laughing about her old antics, feeling hope radiating all around her. Blossom’s success

shows the power of mentorship, specifically with youth who are on a dangerous path of drugs,

gang-related violence, and academic neglect.

They always say it takes a village to raise a child. Thread, an organization founded in

2004 and based in Maryland, takes this statement literally. Thread partners struggling students

from Baltimore high schools with a team of supportive adults, some of which are undergraduate

volunteers from the nearby Johns Hopkins University, while others are older community
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members. The Thread program philosophy is “to establish a wealth of human connection

permanently linked by unconditional love and support” (JH Bloomberg, 2014). Thread identifies

students who are struggling with poverty, homelessness, family breakdown or single parents who

are overwhelmed by work, illness or other problems. They are failing out of school and rarely

show up to class (Bornstein, 2016). Essentially, Thread allows an untraditional family to form

around the student. Each ‘family’ has around five volunteers from the community and the

University developing relationships with the student and each other. Thread mentors “commit to

support [students] in any ways necessary, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 10 years”

(Bornstein, 2016). They are relentlessly supportive, doing everything necessary for their student.

This could mean acting as an alarm clock for the student to get out of bed, bringing space heaters

to his home, or scheduling appointments. Thread mentors are secretaries, life coaches, friends,

nurses, and parents all wrapped up in one. Given all of this support, Thread students have had

remarkable educational outcomes, with 92% of them graduating high school, and 90% accepted

to college (JH Bloomberg, 2014).

The benefit to the team approach is that one mentor does not take on all of the work and

energy it takes to maintain a strong mentorship, which eliminates the notion of mentor burnout.

One ‘family’ member is always on call for the mentee, disseminating responsibility across many

relationships. On the other hand, one issue that I imagine could arise from Thread’s approach is

that the relationships formed between mentee and mentor are less strong because the love is

spread out across the mentee’s four different mentors. Then again, it might be smart to have

different kinds of relationships with mentors. Drawing from my own experience, I find that there

are certain problems I confide in certain mentors about. Some provide comfort and
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understanding, while others offer direct advice to help me mend issues. Naturally, parents react

differently than friends to certain situations, which is probably why teenagers often drift apart

from their parents while they attempt to figure themselves out. One mentee reported on a survey

distributed by the National Mentoring Partnership, “Often it is uncomfortable to go to a parent

about topics such as friendships, relationships, and drinking, but it is easier to talk to a trusted

adult other than a parent” (Bruce, 2014). The team benefit of Thread is that students can utilize

the trust he or she has in one mentor to build up relationships with the other mentors or adults in

his or her life. I picture it as a sort of trampoline effect, bouncing off of one support to bolster the

jump of the other support.

Just as in the Juanita-Davina mentorship, the familial relationships in Thread are not

without conflict. One student a New York Times reporter interviewed said, “[I] said something

really hurtful to [one of my Thread mentors], and she started to cry. I saw she was crying

because she loves me. I had never had that.” Imagine that. This young adult had never known

unconditional love, the kind that stayed and persevered and even caused tears and frustration. He

remarked how his life had become enmeshed in his Thread family and reflected on how “people

outside my race, age range, and blood family have become the people who are closest to me”

(Bornstein, 2016). This quote reveals how salient unconditional love can be for youth who have

never experienced stable family relationships. Many of those youth may go searching for family

with gang affiliations and toxic relationships; programs like Blossom and Thread offer a safer

alternative to their quest for support.

The idea of unrelated family figures hits home for me. A few years ago, a classmate said

to me, “Livie, you are your own person. You can build your family around you.” That’s one of
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the most memorable pieces of advice I have been given. It gives me the freedom to break away

from the environment I was raised in, taking what I will from my upbringing, but forging my

own path with my favorite people by my side for years to come. With this came acceptance of

my relationships and connections with those who have mentored me and essentially become as

close as family. I feel most at home and at peace when I’m out walking along the shores of

Martha’s Vineyard with a mentor-turned-friend beside me and our exuberant dogs racing ahead.

Blood-related relationship or not, I am home when I am with my mentors.

The mentee-mentor relationship can be symbiotic. One Iranian-born Thread mentor from

Johns Hopkins University wrote, “The barriers of language, culture, and presumptions made me

feel lonely, marginalized and insignificant in my new community...right when I was going

through this gloomy struggle I joined Thread, and met many dreamers. One of them was a high

school student, stuck in the cycle of failure, poverty, and drugs. [Together] we learned not to lose

hope and how to keep on dreaming for a brighter future” (JH Bloomberg, 2014). In this case,

mentorship became a sort of dual-learning process. One of my most influential mentors wrote me

a poignant letter last year: “Therapy is not about ‘fixing someone.’ I’ve always known this but

you have allowed me to truly embrace this belief and to put it into a practice...The relationship.

The connection. The power of connection. It has made me a better therapist and a better person.”

I myself have felt this ‘power of connection’ as a mentor. I have provided support for a young

woman named Camilla for three years. She is somebody who struggles with academic anxiety, as

I once did. Now that I am farther along in my journey towards conquering that anxiety, I am able

to provide the kind of support to Camilla as I would have wanted somebody to give me. I benefit

from our relationship because it solidifies the fact that I have come so far, and allows me focus
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on somebody else’s issues rather than my own for the time that I am talking to her. I can

empathize so strongly and I find comfort in knowing that I am not always the one who needs

help; I can also act as the helper. It’s remarkable how much change can happen with the power

of connection and a heck of a lot of love. Some may wonder if mentorship is a reality for every

community in America, and where can we find the people with the kind of dedication it takes to

be a good mentor. My answer is that they are found in former mentees—those like myself who

know how transformative a mentoring relationship can be.

The practice of mentorship full of unconditional love should be fostered by educators

across the country. This does not, however, mean that every teacher needs to be a mentor to

every student. Instead, classrooms and teachers should lay the groundwork for the sense of

safety, trust, and community that will most likely be found outside of the classroom in each

student’s mentor. Asian American studies professor and immigrant activist Glenn Omatsu

discusses the sort of relationship the school environment can have with the community at large:

“Learning occurs not within the individual person but for a person within a web of social

relationships. If I want to increase learning outcomes for each student, I need to enhance human

relationships. Classrooms thus need to be conceptualized as learning communities that are

connected to larger communities outside the campus” (Omatsu, 2016). Omatsu’s classroom is

one in which the quality of relationships trumps the quality of a spelling quiz (although the

spelling quiz could be used to enhance the relationship, of course). This could be fostered by the

training of teachers in, and implementation of, social and emotional learning (SEL) activities in

the classroom. Because teachers in larger school settings cannot possibly be involved in the lives

of all of the students he or she instructs in one day, they must draw from the larger community
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for support. This may be where programs like Thread come in, with their team approach that

draws from non-academic resources. At the very least, educators can be aware enough of the

resources in the community they teach in to be able to steer students in the direction of success

by connecting them with local counseling services or mentoring programs.

Educators have the power to teach with love, hopefully inspiring a generation of mentees

who know how to act and feel that same love with their mentors. Unconditional love is

revolutionary. It persists through triumphs and failures, providing a stabilizing foundation for all

youth who encounter it. It’s up to us, as educators and adults, to turn around and face the next

generation; it’s up to us to find the youth we once were, and to give them the support we

received, or wish we had received; it is up to us to continue this chain of love.

Works Cited

Ayalon, A. (2011). ​Teachers As Mentors : Models for Promoting Achievement with

Disadvantaged and Underrepresented Students by Creating Community​. Sterling, Va:

Stylus Publishing.

Bornstein, D. (2016, March 08). For Vulnerable Teenagers, a Web of Support. Retrieved April

30, 2017, from

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/for-struggling-kids-unconditional-supp

ort/

Bruce, M., & Bridgeland, J. (2014, January). ​The Mentoring Effect: Young People's

Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring​ (Rep.). Retrieved April 30,

2017, from The National Mentoring Partnership website:

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http://www.mentoring.org/new-site/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/The_Mentoring_Effect_

Full_Report.pdf

Colley, H. (2000, September 7). ​Exploring Myths of Mentor: A Rough Guide to the History of

Mentoring from a Marxist feminist perspective​ [Scholarly project]. In ​University of

Leeds​. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001500

JH Bloomberg School of Public Health. (2016, July 28). Thread. Retrieved April 30,

2017, from ​http://source.jhu.edu/volunteer-agencies/tutoring-and-mentoring/thread.html

Morris, M. (2015). ​Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools​. New Press.

Omatsu, G. (2016). Linking "Book Knowledge" to "Lived Experience". In ​Activist Scholarship:

Antiracism, Feminism, and Social Change​ (pp. 167-185). New York, NY: Routledge.

Shelby, J. (2002, March 17). Helping girls to Blossom After-school program gets high marks.

Retrieved April 30, 2017, from

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/boroughs/helping-girls-blossom-school-program-h

igh-marks-article-1.483449

Villanueva, S. T. (2013). Teaching as a Healing Craft: Decolonizing the Classroom and Creating

Spaces of Hopeful Resistance through Chicano-Indigenous Pedagogical Praxis. ​The

Urban Review,​ ​45​(1), 23-40. doi:10.1007/s11256-012-0222-5

Professor Madden: ​It would be great if you could send my paper to the following address.

Thank you for a wonderful semester!

PO box 764
Oak Bluffs, MA 02557
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