It's St Patrick's Day here in Portland. I made sure to wear some green today, but then I felt guilty when I realized I hadn't done the same for Celia. I had this horrible thought about the kids pinching her mercilessly at school today. Then I looked down at her pantleg as we rode the bus this morning and spotted a sole green stem of a flower on her pants. Whew. Kids can be so cruel.
It's finals week. I had two take home finals assigned. I just turned one in today and the other is due tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty good about them, but the one due tomorrow is slightly confusing. I've tried to contact the professor to ask some questions, but I haven't had any luck. So I guess I'll just do the best I can and hope for the best.
It's been less stressful than I thought it would be. About the only stress I've had recently is a run-in with a graduate student. I seem to have offended this person and they've taken it quite personally. I didn't mean to cause such a row. But as silly as the matter may be, it's always hard to encounter such interpersonal strife. I guess all you can do is seek a peaceful resolution, treat the person with respect, and move on. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway.
Finals week has been nice by freeing up time from classes and homework. It's given me more of a chance to write and work on some other projects. Right now, my main project is an article on school-based mentoring. The goal is to submit something for publication to an academic journal. It seems a bit daunting, but I'm looking forward to learning about how the whole article submission process works. I'm also learning a lot in the process of writing.
I've also started a little writing on the guidebook for youth mentoring professionals. I'm trying not the let the magnitude of the project get me down, but it's a bit paralyzing to think about it. I guess the best strategy is just to start writing, one small chunk at a time.
I really enjoy writing, but I'm not sure I'm cut out to do it on a daily basis. It's pretty scary to think about. Last week I read the piece in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace and his last days. I keep reflecting on how sad it was to lose such a brilliant mind and gifted writer. I never knew how mentally ill he was. It seems all too common to find genius and mental illness wrapped up in the same person. Maybe its selfish to wish that he was still around to share his gifts the world. But I still do. I can't help think about the works he could have produced during a long life. Here's to you, DFW. I hope you've found peace.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Reality
It looks like I haven't written a post here in a while. I guess I've sort of hit the doldruns. It's probably natural and something that will soon pass. It feels like I'm hitting the stage where the newness of my situation has fallen away. Now my life feels more like reality and less like a departure from it. And those demons that I thought I could dodge have reminded me that they're still there. I wasn't fooling them one bit.
OK. Big deal. The demons are back. Probably Lent is as good a time as any to wrestle with them. And so it goes.
Probably the highlight of my days lately has been my morning commute. Now that Celia's in school, I take her on the bus every day. Then I ride my bike from her school to mine. It's lovely commuting with Celia. We get to spend about a half an hour together on the bus. Lots of time to talk. Today I brought a few books to read to her. Pretty soon she'll be reading to me, I think. She's gotten good at sounding out words. She just needs more practice and confidence in putting them all together. We've also learned our bus driver's name and usually get to sit in Celia's favorite seat (rear window). If the seat's occupied, she will usually ask the person if she can sit there. Invariably they give it up to her.
I'm still learning lots in school. A recent class project has taught me more about the pluses and minuses of collaboration. It's given me much food for thought on collaborative research. I'm still trying to understand how this joint writing of research papers works. I'm sure as I get into it more it will become clearer. I'm just now learning how much hangs in the balance when it comes to research publications. I never knew how important it is for people's careers. All these issues about where something gets published, the order in which the authors are listed, how much something gets cited by other publications are things I'm just learning about.
When you step back and look at it, the way research is produced and published doesn't seem very well adapted to having an impact in the world outside academia. To even get access to these research publications, you generally need to be part of a University or research center that subscribes to the publication. And then if you want to try to read the research in a discerning manner, there's a lot you need to know. I'm still learning how to read these papers critically and I've been at this for a few months now. And then, to top it off, if you want to get ahead in academia, you have to spend your limited time outside of teaching writing for these research journals. The time you might spend working with community organizations doesn't seem to count for much in terms of academic advancement.
It's a crazy world like all the other ones. I never said the non-profit world worked any better. Shame on me if I did.
I've made some more progress on some of my other research projects. I've spent a lot of time in SPSS lately, trying to understand the data in Tom's school-based study. A few other projects are still waiting for review from PSU's IRB. This is a committee that reviews research proposals involving human subjects. I've also been thinking about trying to write something to make sense of all the research on school-based mentoring lately.
Next week is finals week. I got one take home final today and I will get another one tonight. I can see my weekend disappearing. Late next week, my sister Monique is coming to town. I'm looking forward to seeing her and introducing her again to Ferguson. Every day brings a new word from his mouth. Maybe he'll have a sentence to string together for her.
OK. Big deal. The demons are back. Probably Lent is as good a time as any to wrestle with them. And so it goes.
Probably the highlight of my days lately has been my morning commute. Now that Celia's in school, I take her on the bus every day. Then I ride my bike from her school to mine. It's lovely commuting with Celia. We get to spend about a half an hour together on the bus. Lots of time to talk. Today I brought a few books to read to her. Pretty soon she'll be reading to me, I think. She's gotten good at sounding out words. She just needs more practice and confidence in putting them all together. We've also learned our bus driver's name and usually get to sit in Celia's favorite seat (rear window). If the seat's occupied, she will usually ask the person if she can sit there. Invariably they give it up to her.
I'm still learning lots in school. A recent class project has taught me more about the pluses and minuses of collaboration. It's given me much food for thought on collaborative research. I'm still trying to understand how this joint writing of research papers works. I'm sure as I get into it more it will become clearer. I'm just now learning how much hangs in the balance when it comes to research publications. I never knew how important it is for people's careers. All these issues about where something gets published, the order in which the authors are listed, how much something gets cited by other publications are things I'm just learning about.
When you step back and look at it, the way research is produced and published doesn't seem very well adapted to having an impact in the world outside academia. To even get access to these research publications, you generally need to be part of a University or research center that subscribes to the publication. And then if you want to try to read the research in a discerning manner, there's a lot you need to know. I'm still learning how to read these papers critically and I've been at this for a few months now. And then, to top it off, if you want to get ahead in academia, you have to spend your limited time outside of teaching writing for these research journals. The time you might spend working with community organizations doesn't seem to count for much in terms of academic advancement.
It's a crazy world like all the other ones. I never said the non-profit world worked any better. Shame on me if I did.
I've made some more progress on some of my other research projects. I've spent a lot of time in SPSS lately, trying to understand the data in Tom's school-based study. A few other projects are still waiting for review from PSU's IRB. This is a committee that reviews research proposals involving human subjects. I've also been thinking about trying to write something to make sense of all the research on school-based mentoring lately.
Next week is finals week. I got one take home final today and I will get another one tonight. I can see my weekend disappearing. Late next week, my sister Monique is coming to town. I'm looking forward to seeing her and introducing her again to Ferguson. Every day brings a new word from his mouth. Maybe he'll have a sentence to string together for her.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Research and Policy
Last week laid out a fascinating story on how research and policy influence one another.
In my earlier posts, I referenced the Policy Brief on Youth Mentoring and the Department of Education Evaluation Report on their School Mentoring grant program. These are two great examples of how research can influence policy, and they both hit the scene in the same week. In the case of the Policy brief, we had a group of scholars wishing to provide the new federal administration a summary of the current research on youth mentoring. With the Evaluation Report, we had a federal agency releasing its assessment of the efficacy of its own grant program.
It will be interesting to trace these two pieces of work and how they unfold in the world of policy-making. Unfortunately, the Evaluation Report got a lot more play last week since President Obama made a point of saying he was cutting the DOE mentoring program in his budget announcement. At least he chose his words carefully and only referred to "this ineffective mentoring program" instead of making a broader claim that mentoring is ineffective. His word choice also seemed to indicate that the program was duplicating efforts elsewhere. I just hope that people don't read his remarks and conclude that mentoring doesn't work, which seems quite possible in our culture of the sound-bite.
I guess I can't fault Obama for making the cut, in the end. He was been fairly clear throughout the campaign that he was going to cut programs that didn't work. And here a report comes out that says a federal program isn't having an impact. So he basically has no choice other than to cut the program. What's maybe not fair is the fact that very few federal programs are subjected to such scrutiny, particularly at such a young stage of development.
Indeed, if I were to criticize anyone, it would be the Department of Education for rolling out such a large scale program without performing some better evaluation up front. They laid out so much money with so little guidance and so little knowledge of how their program was going to have the intended impact. And if they wanted to evaluate the program right now, it seems like the fairer thing to do would be to evaluate which programs are working the best, and then outlining best practices for their grantees. Once these best practices have been laid out and grantees are abiding by them, maybe then it would be appropriate to have such a large-scale evaluation on outcomes. As one colleague put it, this is probably one of the best cases of going to scale before working out all of the bugs.
I've perused the report, but I'm looking forward to giving it a closer read this week. It'll be the topic of discussion for our first NLC Mentoring Programs Research Committee meeting this Thursday. I'm excited we're getting the committee started and it seems like good timing with such a hot topic to discuss.
It's hard to imagine that finals are coming up next week. I've never been on a quarter system before and I've learned how quickly the time can pass. It must be a stressful environment for teachers to have to plow through the information at such a pace. At least it's efficient, I guess.
I'm happy to report that we've finalized Celia's preschool arrangements, finally. We had been looking for a few more days to round out her schedule in addition to the two days we had at a co-op preschool. But we never found anything that fit well. This weekend, we landed a spot at Shining Star Waldorf School. It's four days a week, so we had to part ways with the co-op. We felt a little guilty, since the school was just getting started. But there was really no one Celia's age there, and most of the class was two years younger. She really needs some peer interaction right now. So she started at Shining Star on Monday and loved it. She'll be there four mornings a week.
It's interesting learning about the Waldorf philosophy. I like the emphasis on nature and imaginative play. I'm looking forward to reading more about it. I also like the concept of teaching students how to be inquisitive self-directed learners. There are several other girls her age, so that's nice (even though the one child she said she liked was the outgoing boy child). We've figured out that I will commute with her on the bus each morning and ride my bike from her school to mine. Jessica will drive over at 1 pm to pick here up. I've really enjoyed the bus commute. It's nice to have half an hour each day alone with Celia with plenty of opportunity for conversation. The first day, we left her bag at one of the bus stops. We had to get off our second bus and go back to the stop. Luckily her bag was still there and we made it to school on time.
So we're feeling more and more settled in here. This weekend, we took our first excursion and explored the Columbia Gorge. Celia hiked all the way to the top of Multnomah Falls (albeit a little whining was involved...and a few bribes with breath mints). We also went to a tap dance recital a block from our house on Saturday. Performers from all over the region came together and danced to recorded music and also a live jazz band. I never knew you could improvise tap with a band. My favorite part was watching the lead dance "trade fours" with each member of the band. The show was a great reminder of all of the cultural opportunities around us here. I made a new commitment to immersing myself and the family in as much culture as we can while we're here. You can't see a tap dancing jam session in Alaska!
In my earlier posts, I referenced the Policy Brief on Youth Mentoring and the Department of Education Evaluation Report on their School Mentoring grant program. These are two great examples of how research can influence policy, and they both hit the scene in the same week. In the case of the Policy brief, we had a group of scholars wishing to provide the new federal administration a summary of the current research on youth mentoring. With the Evaluation Report, we had a federal agency releasing its assessment of the efficacy of its own grant program.
It will be interesting to trace these two pieces of work and how they unfold in the world of policy-making. Unfortunately, the Evaluation Report got a lot more play last week since President Obama made a point of saying he was cutting the DOE mentoring program in his budget announcement. At least he chose his words carefully and only referred to "this ineffective mentoring program" instead of making a broader claim that mentoring is ineffective. His word choice also seemed to indicate that the program was duplicating efforts elsewhere. I just hope that people don't read his remarks and conclude that mentoring doesn't work, which seems quite possible in our culture of the sound-bite.
I guess I can't fault Obama for making the cut, in the end. He was been fairly clear throughout the campaign that he was going to cut programs that didn't work. And here a report comes out that says a federal program isn't having an impact. So he basically has no choice other than to cut the program. What's maybe not fair is the fact that very few federal programs are subjected to such scrutiny, particularly at such a young stage of development.
Indeed, if I were to criticize anyone, it would be the Department of Education for rolling out such a large scale program without performing some better evaluation up front. They laid out so much money with so little guidance and so little knowledge of how their program was going to have the intended impact. And if they wanted to evaluate the program right now, it seems like the fairer thing to do would be to evaluate which programs are working the best, and then outlining best practices for their grantees. Once these best practices have been laid out and grantees are abiding by them, maybe then it would be appropriate to have such a large-scale evaluation on outcomes. As one colleague put it, this is probably one of the best cases of going to scale before working out all of the bugs.
I've perused the report, but I'm looking forward to giving it a closer read this week. It'll be the topic of discussion for our first NLC Mentoring Programs Research Committee meeting this Thursday. I'm excited we're getting the committee started and it seems like good timing with such a hot topic to discuss.
It's hard to imagine that finals are coming up next week. I've never been on a quarter system before and I've learned how quickly the time can pass. It must be a stressful environment for teachers to have to plow through the information at such a pace. At least it's efficient, I guess.
I'm happy to report that we've finalized Celia's preschool arrangements, finally. We had been looking for a few more days to round out her schedule in addition to the two days we had at a co-op preschool. But we never found anything that fit well. This weekend, we landed a spot at Shining Star Waldorf School. It's four days a week, so we had to part ways with the co-op. We felt a little guilty, since the school was just getting started. But there was really no one Celia's age there, and most of the class was two years younger. She really needs some peer interaction right now. So she started at Shining Star on Monday and loved it. She'll be there four mornings a week.
It's interesting learning about the Waldorf philosophy. I like the emphasis on nature and imaginative play. I'm looking forward to reading more about it. I also like the concept of teaching students how to be inquisitive self-directed learners. There are several other girls her age, so that's nice (even though the one child she said she liked was the outgoing boy child). We've figured out that I will commute with her on the bus each morning and ride my bike from her school to mine. Jessica will drive over at 1 pm to pick here up. I've really enjoyed the bus commute. It's nice to have half an hour each day alone with Celia with plenty of opportunity for conversation. The first day, we left her bag at one of the bus stops. We had to get off our second bus and go back to the stop. Luckily her bag was still there and we made it to school on time.
So we're feeling more and more settled in here. This weekend, we took our first excursion and explored the Columbia Gorge. Celia hiked all the way to the top of Multnomah Falls (albeit a little whining was involved...and a few bribes with breath mints). We also went to a tap dance recital a block from our house on Saturday. Performers from all over the region came together and danced to recorded music and also a live jazz band. I never knew you could improvise tap with a band. My favorite part was watching the lead dance "trade fours" with each member of the band. The show was a great reminder of all of the cultural opportunities around us here. I made a new commitment to immersing myself and the family in as much culture as we can while we're here. You can't see a tap dancing jam session in Alaska!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Hammer Falls
Just a few hours after writing my last post, I learned of this announcement on President Obama's budget.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-the-Fiscal-Year-2010-Budget/
"Education Secretary Duncan is set to save tens of millions dollars more by cutting an ineffective mentoring program for students, a program whose mission is being carried out by 100 other programs in 13 other agencies."
It appears that my fears were well-founded.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-the-Fiscal-Year-2010-Budget/
"Education Secretary Duncan is set to save tens of millions dollars more by cutting an ineffective mentoring program for students, a program whose mission is being carried out by 100 other programs in 13 other agencies."
It appears that my fears were well-founded.
Data Explorations
It's Thursday afternoon and I'm in my office looking at partly cloudy sky over the Willamette River. It seems that Spring has sprung here in the rose city. I saw a tree in bloom two days ago and there are crocuses popping up out of the ground. Winter is trying to hang on; last night there was a little snow. But the world is definitely tilting towards spring.
Today, Tom and I had our weekly meeting and he showed me how to run some useful statistical tests in SPSS. So this afternoon, I started exploring the data set from his school-based study to see what I might find. I started out by making a grid of all the possible predictor variables that we have in the data and possible outcome variables. I'm looking at the child and mentor characteristics to see what might predict different relationship quality outcomes. So I'm running some correlations and t-tests on the different variables. I probably ran twenty different predictor variables today and looked at a set of five outcome variables. So far I've only found a few statistically significant results.
I'm very new at all this but the best simile I can come up with right now is panning for gold. It feels like I'm sifting through all the finds of data to find the few nuggets of statistically significant relationships. It's kind of fun because you just don't know what you might find. But it also seems a bit tedious. I can see how you would want to be methodical, to keep track of where you are in the wilderness of data at any point in time.
I'm also working on preparing for some phone interviews for the follow-up research to the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring. We want to get some more in-depth data from participants, so I am creating a phone interview guide and figuring out the logistics to doing the interviews. I've randomly selected five participants from both years. Now I need to work with Tom to make sure we have compliance with the IRB to do the additional interviews. If you aren't familiar with IRBs, they are basically bodies affiliated with research institutions that make sure we are treating human subjects properly. I also need to figure out how I will be able to record the interviews digitally for later transcription.
One of the things I've learned so far is how long things take in a research setting. There are a lot of hidden steps (like getting IRB approval) that you wouldn't know about unless you were forced to do them. It's taken a bit of getting used to, since I am naturally a little manic and impatient. But it's probably good for me to slow down and learn a little patience. It's also probably good for me to learn to think more methodically. Since you're forced to slow down, it makes sense to think through all the future steps up front. Otherwise, you might get far into your study and realize you should have done something differently. But once you are down the path, it's hard to turn back without wasting a lot of time and resources.
This week, I was interested to learn about two separate research papers. One that I would highly recommend reading is a new Policy Brief on youth mentoring. It was written by Tim Cavell, David DuBois, Michael Karcher, Tom Keller, and Jean Rhodes. It outlines a lot of what we know from a research perspective about youth mentoring, it's promise for America's youth, and its limitations. I hope this paper can influence the new administration to invest more in youth mentoring. President Obama seems to be highly interested in research to back up the expenditure of federal resources. It would also be wonderful to see President Obama to personally appeal to men of color to become involved as mentors. He seems uniquely poised to encourage more African American men to mentor youth.
Unfortunately, relying on research to guide our federal expenditures can be a risky proposition. The recent evaluation of school-based mentoring by the US Department of Education is a good example. I'm looking forward to reading it, but I understand that the report has fairly week findings on the impacts from school-based mentoring. This contrasts with the recent study of Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring, which found a wide range of impacts in the first year of the study. I hope that the new administration doesn't jump to the simple conclusion that school-based mentoring doesn't work based on this one evaluation.
Reading research with a keen and critical eye is something I'm still learning how to do. It sure seems to take a while to gain the necessary knowledge to do so. It makes you wonder how well research is digested in this complicated world of ours. My thought right now is that most research probably gets misinterpreted and misread most of the time. But I'm still learning!
Today, Tom and I had our weekly meeting and he showed me how to run some useful statistical tests in SPSS. So this afternoon, I started exploring the data set from his school-based study to see what I might find. I started out by making a grid of all the possible predictor variables that we have in the data and possible outcome variables. I'm looking at the child and mentor characteristics to see what might predict different relationship quality outcomes. So I'm running some correlations and t-tests on the different variables. I probably ran twenty different predictor variables today and looked at a set of five outcome variables. So far I've only found a few statistically significant results.
I'm very new at all this but the best simile I can come up with right now is panning for gold. It feels like I'm sifting through all the finds of data to find the few nuggets of statistically significant relationships. It's kind of fun because you just don't know what you might find. But it also seems a bit tedious. I can see how you would want to be methodical, to keep track of where you are in the wilderness of data at any point in time.
I'm also working on preparing for some phone interviews for the follow-up research to the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring. We want to get some more in-depth data from participants, so I am creating a phone interview guide and figuring out the logistics to doing the interviews. I've randomly selected five participants from both years. Now I need to work with Tom to make sure we have compliance with the IRB to do the additional interviews. If you aren't familiar with IRBs, they are basically bodies affiliated with research institutions that make sure we are treating human subjects properly. I also need to figure out how I will be able to record the interviews digitally for later transcription.
One of the things I've learned so far is how long things take in a research setting. There are a lot of hidden steps (like getting IRB approval) that you wouldn't know about unless you were forced to do them. It's taken a bit of getting used to, since I am naturally a little manic and impatient. But it's probably good for me to slow down and learn a little patience. It's also probably good for me to learn to think more methodically. Since you're forced to slow down, it makes sense to think through all the future steps up front. Otherwise, you might get far into your study and realize you should have done something differently. But once you are down the path, it's hard to turn back without wasting a lot of time and resources.
This week, I was interested to learn about two separate research papers. One that I would highly recommend reading is a new Policy Brief on youth mentoring. It was written by Tim Cavell, David DuBois, Michael Karcher, Tom Keller, and Jean Rhodes. It outlines a lot of what we know from a research perspective about youth mentoring, it's promise for America's youth, and its limitations. I hope this paper can influence the new administration to invest more in youth mentoring. President Obama seems to be highly interested in research to back up the expenditure of federal resources. It would also be wonderful to see President Obama to personally appeal to men of color to become involved as mentors. He seems uniquely poised to encourage more African American men to mentor youth.
Unfortunately, relying on research to guide our federal expenditures can be a risky proposition. The recent evaluation of school-based mentoring by the US Department of Education is a good example. I'm looking forward to reading it, but I understand that the report has fairly week findings on the impacts from school-based mentoring. This contrasts with the recent study of Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring, which found a wide range of impacts in the first year of the study. I hope that the new administration doesn't jump to the simple conclusion that school-based mentoring doesn't work based on this one evaluation.
Reading research with a keen and critical eye is something I'm still learning how to do. It sure seems to take a while to gain the necessary knowledge to do so. It makes you wonder how well research is digested in this complicated world of ours. My thought right now is that most research probably gets misinterpreted and misread most of the time. But I'm still learning!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Last of the Mohicans
Today marks the end of the Portland Jazz Festival. I was lucky to catch three separate shows. I feel especially lucky to have seen some of jazz's elder statesmen: McCoy Tyner, Lou Donaldson, and Bobby Hutcherson. All three of these men played during the height of jazz in the post-bebop era. And all three of them are still playing, whether they want to be or not.
I was impressed by how much chops each of these men still had. Tyner still had his feather-like touch on the keys. Lou Donaldson still had a sweet, sweet sound on the alto-sax, probably sweeter than it was in the 1950s and 60s. I am always amazed when I see someone use their mallets on the vibes to pound out lines of eighteenth notes. Watching Hutcherson do this at his age of 67 was impressive.
As impressive as they were, it struck me in the end that maybe they don't want to be playing still. Lou Donaldson is 82 years old (the same age as my father). He made several jokes about buying his albums because he needs the money. But I think he was serious. I think he probably does really need the money. He probably wished he could stay home in the Bronx and enjoy his retirement. He probably doesn't want to be flying across the country and sleeping in strange hotel rooms any more. But he can't afford not to.
I think I realized this when Hutcherson was playing. He was obviously out of breath the whole time he played. He would sit down behind the vibes between his bouts of playing and even from where I sat I could see that he labored to get his breath. And after his set, he didn't come out for an encore, even though we were all at our feet. He was probably all worn out and needed to rest. Before he finished playing, Donaldson told the audience that after him and Bobby Hutcherson are gone, there won't be anyone left, that they were the "last of the Mohicans" in his words.
Donaldson also mentioned that he was a protege' of Charlie Parker. Indeed, jazz has a strong tradition of mentoring. That's how the music was taught, passed down from one generation to the next. A leader would pass down his knowledge to the members of his band. You learned by hearing, by imitating your elders, by taking what you heard and making it your own.
Jazz is alive today through mentoring. And it seems to be working across all cultural bounds. The highlight for me of the Bobby Hutcherson / Lou Donaldson concert was hearing Donaldson's organist, a woman named Akiko Tsuruga. She's from Japan and hardly speaks English. But she understands the blues like someone from the Mississippi Delta. And she can swing on the Hammond organ with such confidence that if you would think she grew up in a gospel church. During intermission, she was signing albums and I asked her how she learned to swing like that. She pointed to Donaldson and said she had a "good teacher."
"The question isn't whether or not mentoring works. Mentoring has to work," said my mentor Tom Keller last Friday. My mind is still working on these profound words. There have been people who doubt whether or not mentoring works. But as Tom points out, young people have always learned from their elders, just likee Akiko is learning from Lou Donaldson. As complex mammals, we need a lot of instruction from a lot of different adults during our lifetime. If mentoring doesn't work, then our whole world breaks down. Without transfer of knowledge and social support from our elders to our youth, nothing works. Not even jazz.
But yes, we can make it better. And when you formalize something like mentoring, which has occurred naturally in the world for millenia, you have to be careful. You have to realize that you can mess it up. Like a pharmacologist who finds a cure to a rare disease out in the wilderness, you have to be careful with how you bottle the remedy. Your dose might not work they way you intend if it's administered the wrong way, or in the wrong intensity, or to the wrong person. When you package "natural mentoring" up and build a product around it and call it "Big Brothers Big Sisters," you can't just set that product up on the shelf and call it good. You have to keep testing it, keep trying to make it better, keep making sure it's having it's intended impact.
And from what I am gathering, we still have a lot to learn, and a lot to test. In our reading group Friday, we read some of the literature from the other mentoring fields - workplace and academic mentoring. Even in those areas, who have a lot more studies to describe them, we don't know how mentor and mentee personality types affect mentoring relationships. The few studies that we could find on personality effects had very little to say about the matter.
I think there must be something that happens at the personality level between a mentor and a mentee. There is something that happens when two people meet. Some kind of spark set off by how their personalities interact. I think that those matches that have more of the spark when they get started might just have enough strength to weather the hard parts of a relationship better. When the first six or eight months is up and the exciting "get to know you" phase is over, maybe the matches who have sparked more will have enough strength to make it through the tough times. But it seems that no one has studied personality types in youth mentoring relationships. Most of the literature points to mentor characteristics as the most important to predict success. But I still want to know if there's something there.
I'll be getting my chance soon to look at some data. Tom and I made a plan this week for how we're going to start looking at his school mentoring study data. And we've made a new plan to collect some additional data on the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring. Instead of sending out questionnaires to the participants on last years institute, I'm going to pick five random participants from each of the two years and try to interview them over the phone. This week, I'll be working on an interview protocol and running the change in question format by the IRB. Tomorrow begins a new week in academia and I'm looking forward to getting deeper into these research projects.
I was impressed by how much chops each of these men still had. Tyner still had his feather-like touch on the keys. Lou Donaldson still had a sweet, sweet sound on the alto-sax, probably sweeter than it was in the 1950s and 60s. I am always amazed when I see someone use their mallets on the vibes to pound out lines of eighteenth notes. Watching Hutcherson do this at his age of 67 was impressive.
As impressive as they were, it struck me in the end that maybe they don't want to be playing still. Lou Donaldson is 82 years old (the same age as my father). He made several jokes about buying his albums because he needs the money. But I think he was serious. I think he probably does really need the money. He probably wished he could stay home in the Bronx and enjoy his retirement. He probably doesn't want to be flying across the country and sleeping in strange hotel rooms any more. But he can't afford not to.
I think I realized this when Hutcherson was playing. He was obviously out of breath the whole time he played. He would sit down behind the vibes between his bouts of playing and even from where I sat I could see that he labored to get his breath. And after his set, he didn't come out for an encore, even though we were all at our feet. He was probably all worn out and needed to rest. Before he finished playing, Donaldson told the audience that after him and Bobby Hutcherson are gone, there won't be anyone left, that they were the "last of the Mohicans" in his words.
Donaldson also mentioned that he was a protege' of Charlie Parker. Indeed, jazz has a strong tradition of mentoring. That's how the music was taught, passed down from one generation to the next. A leader would pass down his knowledge to the members of his band. You learned by hearing, by imitating your elders, by taking what you heard and making it your own.
Jazz is alive today through mentoring. And it seems to be working across all cultural bounds. The highlight for me of the Bobby Hutcherson / Lou Donaldson concert was hearing Donaldson's organist, a woman named Akiko Tsuruga. She's from Japan and hardly speaks English. But she understands the blues like someone from the Mississippi Delta. And she can swing on the Hammond organ with such confidence that if you would think she grew up in a gospel church. During intermission, she was signing albums and I asked her how she learned to swing like that. She pointed to Donaldson and said she had a "good teacher."
"The question isn't whether or not mentoring works. Mentoring has to work," said my mentor Tom Keller last Friday. My mind is still working on these profound words. There have been people who doubt whether or not mentoring works. But as Tom points out, young people have always learned from their elders, just likee Akiko is learning from Lou Donaldson. As complex mammals, we need a lot of instruction from a lot of different adults during our lifetime. If mentoring doesn't work, then our whole world breaks down. Without transfer of knowledge and social support from our elders to our youth, nothing works. Not even jazz.
But yes, we can make it better. And when you formalize something like mentoring, which has occurred naturally in the world for millenia, you have to be careful. You have to realize that you can mess it up. Like a pharmacologist who finds a cure to a rare disease out in the wilderness, you have to be careful with how you bottle the remedy. Your dose might not work they way you intend if it's administered the wrong way, or in the wrong intensity, or to the wrong person. When you package "natural mentoring" up and build a product around it and call it "Big Brothers Big Sisters," you can't just set that product up on the shelf and call it good. You have to keep testing it, keep trying to make it better, keep making sure it's having it's intended impact.
And from what I am gathering, we still have a lot to learn, and a lot to test. In our reading group Friday, we read some of the literature from the other mentoring fields - workplace and academic mentoring. Even in those areas, who have a lot more studies to describe them, we don't know how mentor and mentee personality types affect mentoring relationships. The few studies that we could find on personality effects had very little to say about the matter.
I think there must be something that happens at the personality level between a mentor and a mentee. There is something that happens when two people meet. Some kind of spark set off by how their personalities interact. I think that those matches that have more of the spark when they get started might just have enough strength to weather the hard parts of a relationship better. When the first six or eight months is up and the exciting "get to know you" phase is over, maybe the matches who have sparked more will have enough strength to make it through the tough times. But it seems that no one has studied personality types in youth mentoring relationships. Most of the literature points to mentor characteristics as the most important to predict success. But I still want to know if there's something there.
I'll be getting my chance soon to look at some data. Tom and I made a plan this week for how we're going to start looking at his school mentoring study data. And we've made a new plan to collect some additional data on the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring. Instead of sending out questionnaires to the participants on last years institute, I'm going to pick five random participants from each of the two years and try to interview them over the phone. This week, I'll be working on an interview protocol and running the change in question format by the IRB. Tomorrow begins a new week in academia and I'm looking forward to getting deeper into these research projects.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Changes
It's Wednesday evening and this week has brought some changes to our little home-for-the-time-being in Southeast Portland.
On Tuesday, Celia had her first day of preschool. After a long search we've found a spot in a co-op preschool pretty close to our house. Celia will be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning. It's nice to have some more peer interactions available to her. It's a new school with a good teacher, but most of the kids are younger than she is. So I think we'll still be on the lookout for more opportunities for Celia to develop some peer relationships. For now, it's nice to add some more structure to her life and give her some more opportunity for exploration.
On the downside for Celia, this week has also brought the exit of Miner the cat. It turns out that the people who are looking after Miner's dog buddy Cole, now have room for a cat. And since Miner and Cole are tight, their owners want them to be together. Tonight someone came to take Miner away. Celia handled it pretty well, but she included a wish for a cat (actually two) of her own in her bedtime prayer tonight. It's been fun to see her and Ferguson bond with the cat these past two weeks. We'll miss Miner and even his habit of nibbling our chins at five am.
These few months have brought a lot of transition for our little family. I wonder a lot how Celia in particular is processing it all. She generally seems pretty happy, so I don't think it's causing her huge problems. But I'm not sure it's still the grand adventure for her that I thought it would be. Living in Portland has become her reality, very quickly. She doesn't really talk much about Juneau and Alaska. So I'm wondering if moving back will be another transition for her, and maybe something that will come as sort of a surprise. It's hard to say exactly what's going on in that world of hers. One thing seems clear, though; she and Ferguson are a lot closer these days. By sheer necessity, they've played more in the past two months together than they probably played together in the previous six months.
I've had a couple interesting new learning opportunities this week. On Monday, I was invited by a pyschology professor I've gotten to know to help critique a research paper with his graduate students. He studies sex offenders and helps review submissions for a few academic journals. So I got to read a submitted article and discuss it with his graduate students on Monday. As I've read more and more research papers, it's struck me how much the range of quality varies. And as I've learned more about statistical methods and their limitations, I've been struck that some writers are making claims that are probably not that well supported by the data. I'm learning to be a careful reader of research papers. But then it also seems that you can become hypercritical. Maybe sometimes you have to realize that a paper isn't perfect, but it does shed some light (however dimly) on a topic that needs a little more attention.
I also got to attend a presentation by attendees of the 2008 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring on Tuesday. Three of them prepared talks on research topics that they learned about at last year's Institute and shared them at the monthly meeting of Oregon Mentors. It was fun to see other mentoring practitioners excited about research and see how the Institute affected their careers. They seemed more motivated about their work, more confident in their ability to read and understand research, and excited to share new ideas with their colleagues. It gave me another impetus to start looking at the data from questionnaires we've received from past participants. As soon as I get the right software installed on my computer, I'm eager to start looking at these questionnaires and try my hand at coding data.
On the fun side, this week also brought the start of the Portland Jazz Festival. I was lucky to get a cheap ticket for Sunday's performance of McCoy Tyner and Joe Lovano. Don Byron and his Ivey-Divey trio opened up. I have always been a huge fan of John Coltrane. So to see McCoy Tyner, his longest serving piano-man, was a real treat. Tyner is in his seventies, but still has plenty of chops. I was particularly impressed by how much touch he still had, from whispering out a soulful ballad to pounding away at escalating chords. I think it may have been intimidating for Lovano to play in the shadow of Coltrane, though. On the one Coltrane tune they played, he ended his solo pretty quickly, like he was trying on Coltrane's shoes and suddenly realized that they were much too big for him. Don Byron and his trio were tight, creative, and playful. And I even got his autograph at intermission. He is probably the greatest jazz clarinetist alive and brings a fresh spirit to the music.
I've got a ticket to Bobby Hutcherson and Lou Donaldson on Sunday, too. Yes, I am learning lots, but having fun, too!
On Tuesday, Celia had her first day of preschool. After a long search we've found a spot in a co-op preschool pretty close to our house. Celia will be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning. It's nice to have some more peer interactions available to her. It's a new school with a good teacher, but most of the kids are younger than she is. So I think we'll still be on the lookout for more opportunities for Celia to develop some peer relationships. For now, it's nice to add some more structure to her life and give her some more opportunity for exploration.
On the downside for Celia, this week has also brought the exit of Miner the cat. It turns out that the people who are looking after Miner's dog buddy Cole, now have room for a cat. And since Miner and Cole are tight, their owners want them to be together. Tonight someone came to take Miner away. Celia handled it pretty well, but she included a wish for a cat (actually two) of her own in her bedtime prayer tonight. It's been fun to see her and Ferguson bond with the cat these past two weeks. We'll miss Miner and even his habit of nibbling our chins at five am.
These few months have brought a lot of transition for our little family. I wonder a lot how Celia in particular is processing it all. She generally seems pretty happy, so I don't think it's causing her huge problems. But I'm not sure it's still the grand adventure for her that I thought it would be. Living in Portland has become her reality, very quickly. She doesn't really talk much about Juneau and Alaska. So I'm wondering if moving back will be another transition for her, and maybe something that will come as sort of a surprise. It's hard to say exactly what's going on in that world of hers. One thing seems clear, though; she and Ferguson are a lot closer these days. By sheer necessity, they've played more in the past two months together than they probably played together in the previous six months.
I've had a couple interesting new learning opportunities this week. On Monday, I was invited by a pyschology professor I've gotten to know to help critique a research paper with his graduate students. He studies sex offenders and helps review submissions for a few academic journals. So I got to read a submitted article and discuss it with his graduate students on Monday. As I've read more and more research papers, it's struck me how much the range of quality varies. And as I've learned more about statistical methods and their limitations, I've been struck that some writers are making claims that are probably not that well supported by the data. I'm learning to be a careful reader of research papers. But then it also seems that you can become hypercritical. Maybe sometimes you have to realize that a paper isn't perfect, but it does shed some light (however dimly) on a topic that needs a little more attention.
I also got to attend a presentation by attendees of the 2008 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring on Tuesday. Three of them prepared talks on research topics that they learned about at last year's Institute and shared them at the monthly meeting of Oregon Mentors. It was fun to see other mentoring practitioners excited about research and see how the Institute affected their careers. They seemed more motivated about their work, more confident in their ability to read and understand research, and excited to share new ideas with their colleagues. It gave me another impetus to start looking at the data from questionnaires we've received from past participants. As soon as I get the right software installed on my computer, I'm eager to start looking at these questionnaires and try my hand at coding data.
On the fun side, this week also brought the start of the Portland Jazz Festival. I was lucky to get a cheap ticket for Sunday's performance of McCoy Tyner and Joe Lovano. Don Byron and his Ivey-Divey trio opened up. I have always been a huge fan of John Coltrane. So to see McCoy Tyner, his longest serving piano-man, was a real treat. Tyner is in his seventies, but still has plenty of chops. I was particularly impressed by how much touch he still had, from whispering out a soulful ballad to pounding away at escalating chords. I think it may have been intimidating for Lovano to play in the shadow of Coltrane, though. On the one Coltrane tune they played, he ended his solo pretty quickly, like he was trying on Coltrane's shoes and suddenly realized that they were much too big for him. Don Byron and his trio were tight, creative, and playful. And I even got his autograph at intermission. He is probably the greatest jazz clarinetist alive and brings a fresh spirit to the music.
I've got a ticket to Bobby Hutcherson and Lou Donaldson on Sunday, too. Yes, I am learning lots, but having fun, too!
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