Mentoring Peer Mentors: Mentor Education and Support in the Composition Program

Composition Studies, Fall 2008 by Reid, E Shelley

If you work in the field of composition and rhetoric, you have very likely participated in a mentoring program, as a teaching assistant (TA), faculty member, or program director. After all, even fifteen years ago, Aliene Cooper and D. G. Kehl found that more than two-thirds of the composition programs they surveyed incorporated a mentoring program for graduate teaching assistants (27). Praise for such programs, both anecdotal and research-supported (e.g., Williams), has continued to be strong enough that Scott Miller et al. argue that mentoring "should become a given in rhetoric and composition programs" (405). While faculty-to-faculty mentoring in composition occurs both in formal and informal situations, and some new-teacher-mentoring continues to be done by full-time faculty, Stephen Wilhoit notes that much of our mentoring is now being done by graduate teaching assistants working with other TAs. Indeed, writing program administrators (WPAs) who supervise TAs can now find plenty of resources recommending that WPAs implement peer-mentoring programs; some even recommending what mentors might do in those programs (see Barr Ebest, das Bender, Hansen et al., Martin and Paine, and Weiser). This scholarship supports mentoring as part of a comprehensive, multifaceted education for TAs who are teaching composition. The literature on teacher-preparation pays scant attention, however, to the task of mentorpreparation. Ironically, while composition scholars adamantly deconstruct the myth that "good writers (naturally, without further study or practice) make good teachers," the field, given the silence about mentoring, still appears to be acting under the belief that "good teachers make good peer mentors," or that mentoring strategies will - and perhaps should - develop "naturally" rather than by design.

Yet good mentoring (like good writing, like good teaching) should not be seen as a product solely of talent and goodwill, something the lucky stumble upon. Being an ambassador between one's friends or colleagues and one's institution is not a natural state. All institutional mentoring situations, including those involving full-time or part-time faculty as well as TAs, pose challenges that can and should be addressed through explicit attention to mentor preparation. Peer-to-peer mentoring among graduate students is particularly fraught with interpersonal challenges and authority quagmires, as issue I have chosen as the focal point of this article (though many of the suggestions below apply to other mentoring situations as well). Specifically, I argue that TA peer mentoring programs need more formal support through well-articulated programmatic structures and through multifaceted mentor education that includes time for theorizing, practice, and reflection. In support of that claim, I draw on mentoring scholarship as well as mentoring experience (my observations as a WPA overseeing peer-mentoring and mentor-education programs for four years, along with the comments of ten TA peer mentors I worked with during that time) to describe the resistances and challenges that peer mentors face. I then describe specific steps that we can take to improve mentor education and support in two ways: indirectly, by clearly articulating a mentoring program's goals and assessing its performance, and directly, by creating opportunities for mentors to investigate mentoring challenges as well as to study and practice specific mentoring strategies.

It's Not Like Falling in Love: Denaturalizing Mentoring for Peer Mentors

[It was hard] dealing with mentees who felt the mentor program . . . [suggested] they weren't capable of teaching alone . . . who were insulted by the mere idea.

[How do you communicate] that a mentor is not an assistant DA, poised to prosecute or bring charges ... ?

[I did not] have the authority to really "do" anything if the situations called for it.

[How could I] be a mentor ... to someone with whom I was a friend?

- George Mason University (GMU) Peer Mentors1

It can be tempting to see mentoring through a romantic lens, in which "[m]entors are attracted to proteges who demonstrate dedication, enthusiasm, [and] intelligence" (Collins, qtd. in Otto 18). It can also be pleasant to hope for mentoring to be as unobtrusive as oxygen: "I didn't know I was being mentored when I was being mentored" (Marshall vii). Indeed, as Marie Wunsch notes, "Informal mentoring [can rely] on natural selection, personality congruence, and happenstance. It usually evolves slowly over time as pairs learn to know and trust one another" ("Developing" 29). This idea of mentoring outlines a process that can make both mentor and mentee feel special; it seems to require very little effort; and it meshes nicely with US and academic cultures' emphasis on an individualistic meritocracy. Thus WPAs, or other faculty, who want to increase the support and education their program provides mentors may face some resistance or reluctance to implement formal structures from people who would rather trust to a "natural progression" of mentoring relationships. Yet while some romantic mythologies of mentoring can initially energize the people who create and participate in mentoring, they can also seriously undermine efforts to sustain a mentoring program, and they do little to help new peer mentors. Program directors may thus find it helpful to start by directly confronting the flaws inherent in overly-simplistic views of mentoring, and by consulting with current or previous mentors about the specific challenges of mentoring one's peers.