Becoming a Mentor for Refugee Youth: A Self-Discovery Journey (Redefinition of Traditional Views of Mentorship)

• In Event: Mentoring Multilingual Refugee-Background Learners in Virtual Spaces: Sustaining Opportunities for Mutualistic Learning During COVID-19

Abstract

Purpose

From Fall 2020 to Spring 2021, doctoral students at a Midwestern university partnered with a local nonprofit organization and virtually participated as mentors in its mentoring program for refugee-background students. As such, each graduate student was matched with one multilingual migrant secondary student. In this autoethnographic study (Ellis et al., 2011), the researchers explore the dynamics of mentoring during a period of seven months, which concluded with a showcase of projects co-created by mentees and mentors. Drawing on the notion of positionality as knowledge (Acevedo et al., 2015), this study examines how mentors and mentees negotiated positioning and how mentors and mentees’ multilingual and transnational identities shaped the mentoring experience. The following questions were investigated: (1) How does positionality influence mentorship? More specifically, (2) How does the shared connection of multilingualism and transnationalism between mentees and mentors influence the mentorship experience?

Theoretical Perspectives

Grounded in critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000), the mentorship experience examined in this study was conceived as a critical dialogue between mentors and mentees. Rather than imposing knowledge, mentors engaged in conversation with mentees around themes that served to develop critical conscientization and create a liberating experience. In the light of a positionality (Acevedo et al., 2015) framework, this study also sought to understand how the multiple identities of both mentors and mentees (i.e. multilinguals, transnationals, people of color, and religious minorities) are embedded in the discursive narratives of the mentoring experience.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources

Through the analysis of these weekly Zoom mentoring sessions, mentees’ artifacts, and written reflection memos, the researchers reviewed the symbiotic relationship between the mentor and mentee using qualitative codes (Saldaña, 2016). A first phase of analysis consisted of open coding for common patterns across the data. In a second phase of analysis, we re-coded the data using a coding scheme that later served to refine categories and identify themes that answered the research questions. Specifically, the study explored how the mentorship relationship between two one-one pairings of graduate students and secondary students is shaped by the mentors’ identity and how such a relationship unfolds over the course of the mentoring program.

Conclusions and Scholarly Significance

While each pairing has provided unique insights into the power dynamics of mentorship experiences, graduate students experienced hesitations to becoming mentors as well as noticed growth in their practice as mentors throughout the mentoring experience. In their role as mentors, graduate students struggled to fully understand the responsibility and expectations of being a mentor, while also emphasizing the importance of listening to and raising the student mentees' own voices and valuing their input. As such, the authors of this study, who were themselves the mentors being studied through an autoethnographic lens (Ellis et al., 2011), found that the collaborative and symmetrical nature of this mentorship experience is intrinsically connected to the multiple yet shared identities of mentors and mentees that favored critical conversations, and even more, a liberating experience. The findings of this study explore the importance of positionality in mentorship experiences, which ultimately, supports a symbiotic mentorship.

Authors

• Marisol Masso, Michigan State University

• Ayah Issa, Michigan State University