E-mail 
E-mail 
E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > June > 29 > Entry
Career mentorship done right
Here’s my problem with “job shadowing” and other career experience programs that place young students with professionals to learn about their jobs — too often the kids are just checking a box on a form.
In some cases, the kids are required to complete so many job shadows, sometimes up to three or four in their high school careers. And, too often, there is little effort to match the kids with the right mentors or even with the right careers they might actually want to pursue. Some kids are reaching for a second or third job to shadow, choosing something they are just vaguely interested in.
That’s not how they do it in Darke County.
Eileen Litchfield, the coordinator of Darke County’s Career Mentorship Program, first called me almost 10 years ago. I was a reporter in the DDN’s Troy bureau then, covering the northern Miami Valley, and Eileen had a Darke County student who was interested in journalism. (For more about the program, go here.)
I do many journalism job shadows. As the paper’s education reporter, I’m usually one of the first contacts for such requests and I’ve always felt a particular responsibility to help kids learn about this profession, whether through job shadows, speaking to them in groups, etc.
From the very beginning, the Darke County kids were different. Mostly, they were really interested in journalism. They asked smart questions. They rarely looked bored.
The key was on the front end. Litchfield does a lot of work screening the kids to find out what they are really interested in. And when she finds a successful mentor, she won’t let them get away. That’s how I’ve stayed involved with the program for almost a decade. She sends me one or two students every year.
Not all of them, probably not even most of them, continue on to study journalism in college. But all of them start a genuine interest. And my time is well spent with a student like that.
Litchfield tells me she is moving on from the program, which is a partnership of the school districts in Darke County through its educational service center. I’ll miss working with her, but fortunately the program will continue under new leadership. To Litchfield, I say good luck on your new endeavors. To the rest of the Miami Valley’s school districts, there is a good model to study in Darke County.
I wish I had a list of their names, the Darke County kids who mentored with me through the years. But I remember many of them, even if their names escape me.
Let me tell you one story of mentorship gone right.
In 2004, I was asked to work with a couple of other reporters who were investigating former Wright State University basketball coach Paul Biancardi’s involvement in a recruiting scandal when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State University. Part of my role was to fight Ohio State for records.
On the day one of the Darke County students was visiting, we hit the jackpot. A huge package of records finally arrived from Ohio State after weeks of wrangling. They contained a list of numbers called by Paul Biancardi’s cell phone while he was working there.
Our other reporters had obtained from other sources the cell phone numbers used by a shadowy Yugoslavian sports agent accused of taking money to shop foreign players to American colleges, in violation of recruiting rules. Biancardi had denied any significant contact with the agent.
The student joined me and a half dozen reporters gathered in a conference room with the box of records. She took a highlighter just like the rest of us and noted line after line of calls between Biancardi and the agent. By the end of the day, we had built a pretty strong case contradicting Biancardi’s story, and the student had a real taste of investigative journalism.
“That was pretty cool,” she said, on her way out the door after contributing to what would become a major front page story that Sunday.
I thought the same thing. Every job shadow should go like this.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By dkzody
July 5, 2008 6:33 PM | Link to this
You are right about the prep on the student’s end, but I’ve also seen the other end where the professional had no idea what to do with a student. I don’t send kids back to those places. “Put the kid to work,” is always my mantra. When they see what the work part of the job is, they get a different perspective than just sitting and watching someone work. That’s when they come back and say it was boring, but if they had real work to do, they come back saying, “wow, I didn’t know it was so (hard, interesting, tough, etc.).
By TRS
June 30, 2008 12:16 PM | Link to this
Good information Scott. Seems like whenever someone job shared with me it was only to fulfill a requirement. Some open ended questions - what relationships exists between schools and businesses to match up students for mentoring experiences? Any aptitude tests or personality profiles, ie Myers-Briggs, which help gain insight into what might interest a student? How do schools go about recruiting businesses to participate in mentoring? In a recent interview with John Ratzenberger who does a travel channel TV show highlighting manufacturing and hands on jobs, Ol “Cliff” notes that there will be a great shortage of workers for such jobs (ie, welders). CTCs offers program to teach such skills - are the right kids being referred to CTC? Is there a good relationship between CTC and public schools? Just wandering..
By School Supporter (Classic)
June 30, 2008 10:21 AM | Link to this
Hey Scott, could a school district use those “investigative journalism” skills to give their own records a thorough going-over? Maybe district treasurers would make productive mentors.
By Concerned Mom of 3
June 30, 2008 5:58 AM | Link to this
Cool story Scott. Thanks for sharing. I think the key piece of the quality job shadowing experiences is the support behind them. If a student works alongside a professional without any preparation or follow up, the experience is only as good as the student and mentor make it. I always gained more from a job shadowing experience if an instructor gave me something specific to look for and reflect on afterward. Maybe one exercise per week. The job shadowing technique works well with the students who learn best by “doing.”