Purpose Statement
The ZEN Of Mentoring:
Mentoring Recapitulates Teaching
By Mark McIntire
March 31, 2000
To my colleagues,
No one asked me to write this epistle. It's not part of the 'expected
outcome' of our seminar. But it does indicate where our Student Success
Seminar 2000 has led me. So, I am grateful to all of you for bringing me to
this place.
It occurs to me that the one topic we have not discussed explicitly is the
topic of 'mentor' in relation to our concern for student success. Some have
referred to their mentoring in passing comments on other seminar topics.
Since I have come to know that a few of you relish your role as mentor, over
and above that of teacher or professor, I thought I might prompt some
discussion on the matter. We shall see.
The term 'mentor' is an ancient one. Odysseus sailed off to the Trojan War
and left his infant son, Telemachus, in the care of his wife, Penelope, and
his servant, Mentor. No mere mortal realized how long Odysseus would be
gone, but as the years passed, Mentor stood by his oath and taught.as a
trusted friend, advisor and teacher. Hence, our modern meaning for the term
has not drifted too far from the original.
Professor Roger Simpson's delightful citation of the Zen Master during this
seminar on student success gave me pause. Here's the citation;
Each morning the old Zen Master sat for an hour in the monastery garden and
polished a stone with a piece of black velvet. One day a disciple asked,
"Master, that stone doesn't seem to shine very much after all the years
you've been polishing it?" "You're right," he replied, "but
it never fails
to remind me how I must try to live each day."
It occurs to me that Professor Simpson has it right. If a teacher cares only
about being a trusted friend, advisor and teacher then the teacher lives a
life of balance and is perceived as 'mentor' by the student. If the teacher
values the task rather than the outcome, then the teacher remains loyal to
the student. If the teacher detaches from the expectations of the times, the
constraints of custom, the tyranny of rote and the adulation of colleagues,
then the teacher enlightens, informs and even entertains the student. The
most curious thing about this approach is that when you will to be an
effective mentor, being an effective teacher follows by necessity. And this
is what I mean by the Zen of the Mentor. It's a matter of the purity of
will, not the extent of the intellect.
But how is this done? Professors in the modern university are not monks in a
monastery. We are not mystics removed from the world. We practice our
disciplines in a carefully ordered institutional sequence that has its own
syntax and grammar, its own policies, rules and procedures. We are expected
to not only accept the expected outcomes of this academe, we are perceived
as its high priests and priestesses. Swift and certain de-frocking lurks in
the bureaucratic shadows for those who do not practice the sacred rites of
'higher-education'. So, how can we practice Zen detachment when we are
expected to warrant academic success for anyone tall enough to push a valid
tuition check over the admissions office counter?
Daily mediation on these levels of detachment may provide the way:
1. Be in the world, yet not of it.
2. Be responsible for every thought and action you profess.
3. Be ever mindful of your limitations and your talents.
4. Be ever concerned to improve your thought and behavior.
5. Be always ready to leave this life.
Our contemporary secular insight tells us that incessant choosing is as
invidious as it is insidious. And, undeniably, incessant choosing is our
common lot as humans. Yet, this does not entail "fear and trembling..
sickness unto death" as some have described our sudden realization that we
are totally responsible for our world as we perceive it.
Not in the slightest. When a teacher becomes a mentor it happens within. It
is seldom perceived from without. Even more rarely is it crowned with
societal rewards.
A student 'recognizes' a mentor, seeks out that mentor, and in doing so, is
more intent to listen, observe and learn. When this happens, the mentor
passes on the process of mentoring to the student that recognizes it. For
most teachers and students this never happens. They are oblivious, even to
the existence of mentoring. This probably accounts of the number of
psychologists, deployed in battalion strength, throughout all levels of our
educational systems.
Teachers try to save the world of all possible students from all probable
failure. They fully believe that this can be done and it's their moral
responsibility to try. Mentors, on the other hand, try only to save
themselves from failure and, in so doing; they communicate the inviolability
of the human struggle for individual meaning and freedom.
And this is precisely what students look for when they seek out a mentor.
Inside each teacher is a mentor waiting to be called out. Many are called,
yet few choose to answer.
So, if a student follows us after class one day across the pedestrian bridge
connecting old campus with new, on our harried way, and if the student
suddenly stops and asks with all the hesitating earnestness they can muster,
"Why do you bother? Why do you do anything at all?" then we know
we're being
paged, not as a psychiatrist, not even as a teacher, but as a mentor.
Will we be ready to answer? What will we say?
---Mark McIntire
Philosophy Department
Santa Barbara City College
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on 4/14/2000 at 2:07:08 PM
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