Mentoring in multiple dimensions.

Abstract: Thousands of words, scores of models, and multitudes of professionals have attempted to explain and successfully replicate this "thing" we call mentoring. All in service to a greater good, using a win-win interpretation of the purpose and outcome, mentoring has become the hallowed pathway to success in almost every profession. However, life is more than a cause and effect equation. This article examines mentoring from a multi-dimensional perspective, with those dimensions encompassing the generational history, family belief system, cultural archetypes, individual learning style, and physical challenges inherent in people of one culture moving through a rigid educational system designed by people of another culture. Key Words: Mentoring, Native American, Education, Cultural Affirmation A review of the literature on mentoring turns up hundreds, no thousands of references to books, articles, audio and video tapes, activities, websites, and professionals whose sole purpose is to pass on knowledge and anecdotal success stories about mentoring. The information is on a continuum ranging from peer counseling, to coaching, to mentoring, to managing, and on to counseling. In my role as the project director for the American Indian Nursing Student Success Program for the University of Oklahoma College of Nursing, I have had to be and do all of those things on that continuum. The experience of mentoring, therefore, is inherently a multi-level activity. The Office of Research Education Consumer Guide (1993) defined mentoring from it's Greek roots, meaning enduring, and the two types as natural and planned mentoring. Natural mentoring occurs through friendship, collegiality, teaching, coaching, and counseling. Planned mentoring, in contrast, occurs through structured programs in which mentors and participants are selected and matched through formal processes. More recently, Stoddard and Tamasy (2003) have identified the ten key principles of mentoring as: living is about giving, perseverance is paramount, open the door, promote alignment between passion and work, share the load don't create it, practice personal values, expose your character, providing a legacy, and take the risk. Richie and Genoni (2003) identified structured mentoring as going through seven stages: rapport, purpose, current situation, objectives, methods, actions, and assessment. These books provide good examples of multi-level mentoring. Multi-dimensional mentoring is this and more. MAKING CONNECTIONS USING NATIVE BELIEF SYSTEMS The Cherokee people believe all decisions should be made with consideration for its impact on seven generations. Many other tribes have similar beliefs about the impact of one person on all of those to which they nave connection. The connection through blood is the strongest, allowing the wisdom of our ancestors to flow through our veins and be passed on to our children, with the heart being the primary organ of its strength and survival. This is true even for those with only the smallest amount of "Indian blood" heritage. Many Native children today grow up without the conscious knowledge of this inherent wisdom in their energetic systems, regardless of their blood quantum. I have heard many elders lament the lack of interest shown by their children for the ancient wisdom, sad that there is no one with which to share this vital information. Most say it must mean it is time to return that wisdom to the earth. This declining interest makes preservation of the community vital to the survival of the tribes. So if the choice is between children who have a higher degree of education and children who are close to home, what do you think that choice will be? With this as the background, I go to these communities to recruit their children into nursing. My first "mentoring" relationship is usually with the family. They talk to me first, usually more than once, over the course of months, before I talk to the son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild, or friend. …