Dean could always remember the first verse of "Amazing Grace" -- perhaps because that was the message and meaning of his life.
Mentoring
John Nunes 9-03-2013
Teacher mentoring students, iofoto / Shutterstock.com
A life transition — like any effort to follow Jesus — is stressful: packing and unpacking, bidding farewells, refocusing from one set of commitments to a new future. It might be summarized in the early North African church leader’s interpretation of this Sunday’s Gospel reading from Luke 14:27: “Take up your stress and your tortures.” (Tertullian)
This September, my family’s transition from the hazy days of summer’s more casual pace back into the back-to-school rat race is tougher than usual. It not only involves our own children finding their way back onto their college campuses, but I am going too, to teach at Valparaiso University where I’ve been appointed to an endowed professorship which supports the study of Christian values in public and professional life.
Of necessity, most roads back-to-school are paved with lines of procedures, rules, and formalized rituals. The foundation of learning, however, is far less formalized or predictable — it’s more relational, like a disciple and master, protégé and mentor, choral director and chorister. Whether in musical arts, as in in Vy Higgensen’s Gospel for Teens program, or in biblical hermeneutics, the best learning happens in healthy relationships.
Trevor Barton 7-31-2012
Custodian mop bucket, Design Pics/Darren Greenwood / Getty Images
Every school day just after 2 p.m., Sandra pushes her cart into my classroom to clean the bathroom and empty the trash cans. She is the school custodian and my students love her. When students hear her squeaky wheels in the hallway outside our door, they listen for her kind giggle as she enters the room. "Ms. Sandra! Ms. Sandra! Can I help you empty the trash? Can I help you?" they yell out with their hands waving in the air.
She responds, "Jennifer, you look so cute today! How you doin' VicTOR? Francisco, baby, you look like you're doing a good job for Mr. Barton. You come on over and help me today. Anna, honey, that's okay, you can help me tomorrow." She knows all of my students by name.
Jeannie Choi, Matthew Hildreth, Don Miller 1-01-2010
Don Miller is the founder of The Mentoring Project and author of
Mark Cerbone 9-01-1996
Debate over the importance of "role models" and "mentoring" touches on everything from the behavior of professional athletes to the trumpet call to men sounded by Promise Keepers. Charles Barkley claims no responsibility to be a role model, while a Million Men march to proclaim they ought to be.
A steady stream of unsettling incidents involving young people helps propel the discussion on the impact of role models—positive and negative—on impressionable youth and formative children. It's an especially urgent topic in urban America, where the social and economic fabric continues to unravel. The plagues of racism, violence, poverty, and environmental degradation have some obvious linkages to the more muted crisis of the declining number of healthy, intact families.
The end results of disintegrating family structures are obvious in our troubled Buffalo, New York neighborhood. Adult models of responsibility, maturity, and employment are hard to find on the West Side. Of the 50 or so children and teens that attend our church's youth programs, only one family is headed by a married, employed couple. Pain and disruption mark nearly all of their homes. Missing father, alcoholic mother, poor food, siblings fathered by different men (all now absent), drugs, violence.