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Transcript of NTA Conference Call Presentation held on 07/16/97

Mentorship Strategies to Promote the Self-Determination of Youth with Disabilities in School-to-Work Systems

Presented by

Transition Research Institute, John R. Johnson

Hood Center for Family Support, Dartmouth College, Alison Turner

Oregon Health Sciences University Center for Self-Determination, Dean Westwood

Take Charge for the Future Program, Mentors and Mentees

Mary Mack (NTA): Welcome to today's call on mentorship and self-determination. We have Alison Turner from the Hood Center for Family Support at Dartmouth College, Dean Westwood from the Oregon Health Sciences University Center for Self-Determination, John Johnson from the National Transition Alliance, and mentors and mentees from the Take Charge projects around the country. Alison will be facilitating this call, so let's begin with you Alison.

Alison Turner (Take Charge Project/HCFS): Sure. My name is Alison Turner. I work on a federal grant through the Department of Education called Take Charge for the Future with the Hood Center for Family Support at Dartmouth. At the end of the teleconference, Dean and I would be glad to give our email addresses if any of you have further questions about Take Charge or mentoring.

I will give you a little background on Take Charge, and then we will be hearing from mentors and mentees in the program. The model demonstration project, Self Determination for Youth with Disabilities, has sites in Durham, North Carolina, Collin County, Texas, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Portland, Oregon, and a couple of sites in New Hampshire. The mentors and mentees on the call today are from the sites in New Hampshire, Oregon and Wisconsin.

I'd like to begin by briefly describing the components of Take Charge. These are coaching, parent support and mentoring. Coaching, as opposed to a teaching model, would take place where students meet one-on-one or in small groups with a coach to dream about their future. They set goals based on their future dreams, gather support for their goals through a self-directed transition planning meeting, and then they move into problem solving barriers that get in the way of their goals, prepare to do their goals and then actually do it. It's really geared toward teens succeeding at the goals that they set for themselves. In order to achieve that success we have equally important roles in parent support, providing support for parents and helping them recognize their children's dreams and support those dreams and the goals in working together with their kids.

Dean Westwood will describe more about the mentor component of Take Charge, which is why we're all here today. Dean?

Dean Westwood (Take Charge Project/OHSU): Hello. We have a larger group of mentors and mentees than I thought, so I'm going to provide a brief overview of mentoring as the Take Charge Project sees it. As we see it, the purpose of mentoring is to foster opportunities for young adults to have access to and share experiences with adult role models or more experienced peers with similar experiences in the past or present. The most important thing we like to emphasize is that similar interests are important for both, but a shared experience in the past or present are of most benefit. Our strong belief is that individuals who are going through a certain phase or are experiencing certain difficulties through either middle school or high school, have no greater resource than an adult mentor who's been through that process and has experienced those same issues at the same time in their lives. So we look for an individual who is not necessarily the most successful, say in the fortune five hundred companies, but an individual who can share and relate to teenagers what it is they did during that period of their lives that helped them to cope with the issues that they were or are facing and to get through the troubling times that lead to being successful as an adult.

Breaking that down, there are many ways that mentoring can occur. The most popular way is one-on-one mentoring, where an adult mentor is matched with a student who has similar or shared experiences in the past. One-on-one mentoring is the most difficult of all the mentoring options, because it's very time consuming and time intensive. You're trying to match individuals who have as close experiences in the past as possible. That not only takes a lot of recruiting, it also takes an enormous amount of training in appropriate boundaries and relationship building needed with that one-on-one mentoring model. Also, it requires supporting the mentor to foster that relationship. When we speak about mentoring, that's what we're really talking about - a relationship that's built between the adult who's going to model coping and life skills and the teenager or young adult. This model of mentoring is the best, it's kind of the cadillac version, if you will.

What we've done here in Oregon is we've created a kind of a hybrid, which has arisen out of workshops or group mentoring. We recruited a cadre of mentors, trained those mentors, and then allowed the students who are using the Take Charge curriculum to come in on a monthly basis to meet with these mentors and to brainstorm and share ideas and do activities with the mentors that are relevant to both their lives. An off shoot of workshop mentoring is one-on-one connections, where we don't necessarily persuade or require as a prerequisite that there be a one-on-one match, but then in the course of the workshop, a mentor and mentee will find a common or shared experience from the past, and then they will go and do one-on-one activities that foster and facilitate the student's ability to see an adult modeling their coping skills in real world situations. The development of mentor-mentee relationships is all about providing support. You can't take a group of high school students who experience various issues with regards to disability or at-risk issues, and just stick them with a group of adults who, with good intent, want to provide mentorship to students, and leave it at that. Well, that's fine and there might be benefit derived from that, but what is most important, at least in our belief, is that they have some kind of shared experience, whether it be a student who is experiencing some gang activity and then you hook them up with an adult who as a teenager had some issues around gang activity. Or whether it's just an issue of a student not being real connected to extracurricular activities or other social aspects of school or just didn't have a real successful experience in school, the most benefit comes from finding an adult who had those same experiences and facilitating their interaction with support and training. There is a lot of emphasis placed right now on job shadowing, a mentor situation where a student will go with an adult mentor to a work site and shadow them on that job. Although this does have benefit, we believe there's more benefit derived from direct contact between the adult and the student, where the student has the opportunity to share ideas and strategies on coping skills. The benefits to the relationship are both ways. We've had mentors impart to us that they have increased self-esteem knowing that they have an impact on young adults who have experienced the same things that they have experienced on their life path. And it gives a broader understanding of the issues that youth today now face, as opposed to say, youth ten or fifteen years ago. The focus and direction with regards to mentoring that we are looking toward is trying to shift away from just matching students with adults, job shadows, if you will, but focusing more on the shared experiences.

I'm going to turn it back to Alison so that she can introduce the New Hampshire people and the Wisconsin people.

Alison Turner: Unlike Dean, who's been doing a lot of group mentoring experiences, here in New Hampshire we have been working mostly with one-on-one mentor matches. I have here Michelle Bettcher who is a junior at Portsmouth High in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Sarah Bateman has been a mentor and former Take Charge student; and Jesse Cruz who will be addressing mentor experiences that he's been having this past spring in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Unfortunately Jessie Camus who is a mentee was unable to join us today. Jesse Cruz will talk about his relationship with Jessie Camus as his mentor. Now, I'd like to introduce Michelle.

Michelle Bettcher (Mentee): This is Michelle Bettcher, and I have a learning disability. I'm a former student of Take Charge and I went to the workshops with Sarah. Me and Sarah really get along, we have some similar challenges, and it made me realize that even if you have any disabilities, you can get a good job if you work hard and put your mind to it. I had some interests like going to law school and doing cosmetology. Sarah has a really good friend in law school in Boston, and as an activity we went to the Concord New Hampshire Courthouse to observe what she did all day long. I was able to sit in on one trial and was also able to see how Kim worked with the judge.

Alison Turner: Sarah is here and she's going to be addressing her relationship with Michelle.

Sarah Bateman (Mentor): Hi, I'm Sarah Bateman and I'll start with a little bit of my background. I had a learning disability through high school which affected my ability to concentrate in school, and I really didn't feel as though I fit in. I think Dean talked a little about the whole social aspect of it. Consequently, I turned to drugs and alcohol abuse. I just had a negative attitude toward learning. I started Take Charge at Portsmouth High School at the age of seventeen and actually had a mentor myself. I think that it was at the early stages of the mentorship, but it really helped me even then. It was nice to have someone as a friend who was, you know, a little bit older than I was, who had already been through what I was going through and who I could just go to visit. It was great.

I learned a lot from being in Take Charge then and even now I'm learning so much more from being a mentor. It really helps me keep my own goals in site, by being a mentor to Michelle. We've really got a great friendship that's blossoming and it's just been really fun. It's been great that I have a friend that could help her out and that we all went together to the courthouse. I think Michelle enjoyed that, and it helped narrow down some of her interests in the law field.

My personal feeling about mentorship is, you know, everyone's high school experience is unique and special, but with Take Charge and the mentoring, it doesn't have to be as intimidating. Take it from someone who's been there, I mean you would have to go through it blind or try to figure it out on your own. Now you can have someone as friend who's been through it.

Alison Turner: Thank you Sarah. Now I'd like to introduce Jesse Cruz.

Jesse Cruz (Mentor): I'm Jesse Cruz from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I too have a learning disability, as well as a physical disability. I've been in a wheelchair for twenty three years. It was a swimming accident, alcohol related, so I can relate to what the last speaker was talking about. I'm an alcohol and drug counselor, too. And so when they hooked me up with Jesse Camus, he was having some problems with self-esteem, and he needed somebody like a mentor. He was missing a lot of school and I bonded with this guy and we started to go see boxing and I took him places. As a matter of fact, he came out, I think he was in the tenth grade he passed to the eleventh grade you know. And he went through some changes as far as different jobs and finally he found a job that he feels comfortable with and he's working at Hardees. And he felt bad that he couldn't be here on this call today.

As for me, I work with the gangs over here in Milwaukee and with people who are disabled and chemically dependent. I'm there for them - this is what I do, I like helping kids. We had a big rally the other day here where all the speakers there were mentors too. We're trying to stop violence and gang affiliation over here.

Jesse and I really bonded, and I just feel bad that he's not here and I know he'd probably tell you more about how we hooked up and do things together. He's happy where he's working. I'm glad that I was involved here with Alison Turner at Independence First. Another thing, I opened up my own agency. I have a nonprofit organization here in Milwaukee that helps people with disabilities and hooks them up to VR and independent living and this is what I like to do. But I was out there for thirty five years of hell in addiction. And I had a mentor when I came into the program, too. This man has helped me out a great deal, so I know I can't do it myself. I need other people that are positive role models in my life, and I just want to give back what was offered to me in my recovery. I've been sober for nine years already and I'm just happy I've been able to help Jesse. If they do another project like this, I'll be there to help support kids, because that's one child that's going to get saved, he'll get to smell the coffee and wake up in the morning. I listened to what Jessie had to say. I could feel his pain too, what he was going through. And that's what it's all about. About carrying the message and being there and listening. That's what it's all about.

Alison Turner: Thank you Jessie. Dean, would you like to introduce the people you have in Portland?

Dean Westwood: This is a variation from the original list. We have one mentor and four mentees. Barbara is with us, a mentor, and the mentees or students are Jafet, Alan, Radneesh and Adam. Barbara will begin speaking about her experience as a mentor for the Take Charge Program.

Before the students speak, I'd first like to talk about what we did out here. As I said previously, we did a workshop series, and most of our mentor contacts and the facilitation of those contacts came from the those workshop settings and group outings. These guys are going to be discussing their experiences out of those workshops, the peer support that they gained and the group outings that they had. So I'm going to go ahead and give it over to Barbara and from there we'll segue on to each one of our students.

Barbara (Mentor): My name is Barbara and I am a mentor here with Take Charge in Portland. The disability that I had when I was going to school was a learning disability, which came down to an audio processing problem, where I have a hard time concentrating and listening. A lot of the kids in the Take Charge Program had the same kind of learning disabled problems that I did, and the thing that I got out of it was to help people learn the shortcuts that I learned in order to get good grades. I graduated from high school with a very poor GPA. I went through five different high schools and I had to work my way back up again. And the thing that I was trying to impart with the youth that I mentored was that there are ways around that. Even if you end up in a situation that you think you can't get out of, there are ways and people there to help you. I noticed that from September - when we started - to January - when we ended - that the kids seemed to have more of an idea of what they could do for themselves and not to feel like such victims of the system. Basically, it helped me out in that I felt like I really did something good and it seemed to help these guys out.

Dean Westwood: This is Dean. Barbara, in terms of building or fostering that relationship between student and mentor, can you think of any one thing that was of most benefit with regards to trying to keep avenues open? Were there things that you did to try and foster communications?

Barbara (Mentor): Yeah. We had a very large group of mentees and very few mentors. It was very important to be the person to draw people out into conversation, and to start the conversation, to just be open and completely honest. I went through drug treatment when I was in high school, and I was suicidal. So it was important to completely let these guys know where I was coming from, that I could be approached, that I was available at work and at home, to just basically help them.

Dean Westwood: Great. We're going to go ahead and segue onto Jafet. Jafet was a student in the Take Charge Program at Rossevelt High School here and is currently working with one of our mentor coordinators on a bimonthly basis. So, I'm going to go ahead and toss it over to Jafet, he's one of our student mentees.

Jafet Marino (Mentee): My name is Jafet Marino. I'm in the tenth grade this year, and I'm real glad to have the chance to work with the Take Charge group. They really helped me out through my difficult times. I ran into some problems in my school year, I started skipping and getting into a lot of trouble. And in the Take Charge group, all my buddies were in there, they got me to go to school and I'm glad that they did that for me.

Dean Westwood: So would say that the most benefit that you derived out of these workshops was creating a bond between you and your partners, where they felt enough concern about you just to come and track you down and get you back into school?

Jafet Marino (Mentee): Yeah, I had trouble with my teachers and stuff. And Lawrence, my mentor, he started helping me out a lot. We had meetings about it and stuff. He really did a good job getting me back to school.

Dean Westwood: And so right now, what would you say, if you had one thing you had to say about the group mentoring and the peer support you got through your partners, what was the best thing about it?

Jafet Marino (Mentee): Support means a lot. I hated working at the bonding thing. It was kind of boring. I learned a lot about myself, that I'm a kinesthetic learner and the Take Charge group helped me learn about that. We have things that we get to talk about and stuff.

Dean Westwood: There was a situation with this group where the mentor coordinator was out at the school and one of the students in the group said, "Hey, we need to meet more often, once a month isn't enough, we've got a lot of issues to discuss." So through the facilitation of these workshops, as Barbara imparted earlier, we had a lot of students and not enough mentors. But they took it upon themselves to approach the mentor coordinator and say, "Hey, we want to meet more often, we have things we need to talk about, what can you do to facilitate us being able to get together?"

That being noted, I'm going to go ahead and segue over to Alan. Alan you want to go ahead and share some stuff about what you did and what you got out of it?

Allan (Mentee): My name is Allan. I really liked the meetings and stuff, I like the trips better, you know, like when we went bowling, to Mount Hood. And that's about it.

Dean Westwood: When you guys went on these things, did you ever have an opportunity to talk about some of the issues that were troubling you, or what was going on in school?

Allan (Mentee): Sometimes they helped me out with school work. I used to skip sometimes, but I never skipped a lot, just like twice a week.

Dean Westwood: So, in the workshop Alan, did you guys talk about cutting class and those kind of things? Did you think those things over and come to some kind of decision about what you want to do about that and what your actions were going to be?

Allan (Mentee): Ah, we never talked about that.

Jafet Marino (Mentee): This is Jafet, when I was skipping a lot, Lawrence came up to me and said that it may not seem like a big deal right now, because I was a freshman at the time, but everybody was telling me that I'll have a lot of problems when I become a senior.

Dean Westwood: I want to ask Allan one more time. Allan, with regards to being involved in all this, and you guys continuing meeting as a group, what if anything has changed for you while being involved in this mentoring process with Take Charge? Was there any positive thing out of it?

Allan (Mentee): No.

Jafet Marino (Mentee): This is Jafet again, it keeps us out of trouble and out of gangs and violence.

Dean Westwood: Are you done partner?

Allan (Mentee): Uhuh. (laugh)

Dean Westwood: Okay. Hey, honesty is what we're looking for. We're going to slide over to Radneesh and let him speak a little bit. Radneesh, why don't you go ahead, introduce yourself, and talk about your experience.

Radneesh (Mentee): Hi, my name is Radneesh. Take Charge has helped me with my school work, got my grades up and stuff. I used to have like C's and stuff, and now I have like B's. So they helped me with school work.

Dean Westwood: And what was the workshop experience like for you? Was it of benefit to you?

Radneesh (Mentee): The first time I went it was boring. I didn't like it, I didn't want to go, then my friends they said to go again. So I went and I started liking it. It got to be fun.

Dean Westwood: With regards to anything that you think that might have happened. Were there any changes that occurred for you as you were going through the process of hooking up with your partners and going to the workshops and doing the Take Charge thing?

Radneesh (Mentee): I care more about my life than I did.

Dean Westwood: In the past, it wasn't something that you really gave much thought to?

Radneesh (Mentee): Yeah.

Dean Westwood: So, if you could pick one thing out of every aspect of Take Charge, which was your favorite? Which did you like the best?

Radneesh (Mentee): Going places, because I never went to Mount Hood before, and we took stuff there, so it was pretty fun. But it was too cold up there.

Dean Westwood: Thank you Radneesh. We have one more speaker. Adam why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Adam Magnett (Mentee): My name is Adam and I have cerebral palsy. The people that mentored me, I feel like we're closer. That maybe what they were when they were young, because of maybe having a disability like myself, as in being in a wheelchair or something, or that they were different, as I sometimes am. I found that out with my one-on-one activity from the group when me and a mentor went to a job fair and had lunch. I found that the changes that occurred with me is that I became more open, I found more openings or doors that I didn't know were open for me that I could access. And I'm still using some of those doors. What I liked the best is when all of us as a group went to a hockey game just as a fun thing and I think that it brings us together as a group.

Dean Westwood: With regards to your discussion or speaking about going with a mentor, and then after that still taking some of that with you, so that you're keeping your options open and looking at the various doors that are available to you, will you take these on with you for the rest of your life?

Adam Magnett (Mentee): Oh, definitely because who knows what you're going to be doing later on. I mean I could get into this as a career if I wanted to, helping other kids with disabilities, also. I just feel that this is a really good experience for me.

Dean Westwood: So would you say that the Take Charge project was of benefit to you, and most importantly was the ability to access someone who's been down the same path as you're on and share your ideas with them and brainstorm with them was useful?

Adam Magnett (Mentee): Yes, because as I said, they know what they've been through and they bring their knowledge to me to help me out with what I'm doing, and also I bring my knowledge with them to see maybe what they can do to help me.

Dean Westwood: That's great, thanks a lot Adam. Thank you very much guys, you all did a great job. That is our last speaker with regards to mentors and mentees. We're going to go ahead and take it back to Alison.

Alison Turner: Well, do any of you have questions that you'd like to ask anybody specifically, or any general questions about mentoring that you'd like to ask about?

Mary Mack: Alison, this is Mary Mack, I'd like to ask a question. One of things that we've talked about earlier on in the call was the parent support component, working with parents. I'd like to know a little bit more about that.

Alison Turner: Within the Take Charge project we have a parent support coordinator, who meets with parents, maybe for coffee, but also the workshop series includes parents. They first pick topics that they'd like to hear about that are important to them. The parent support coordinator works with parents one-on-one and in small groups at the workshop.

We had a tremendous amount success also speaking with mentors around issues of independent living skills where parents often are very fearful to let go of their kids. Learning about public transportation in the city or trying out a new recreational activity that a mentor might hook up with a student, gives parents a vision for the future for their kids. They have to let go a little bit and trust that the kids can move on and learn different kinds of adult living skills that the parents oftentimes aren't really wanting to let go. And they're not always ready, but between the coaching and the kinds of goals the kids set for themselves and also relating to the mentors and their experiences, we found a lot of parents were able to seek a much brighter future for their kids than they would have without that experience with Take Charge.

Participant: This is Donna Kindermen from West Virginia. Alison, some of us in the room were wondering if there are any number of kids who are nonverbal or who have very significant disabilities involved in this program?

Alison Turner: We have had some kids that are nonverbal that have participated in the project. Dean maybe you would like to address that, I know that the original Take Charge which started out in Portland had a couple of kids who used augmentative communication devices.

Dean Westwood: In the Take Charge Project that we've worked on and implemented here in the field study sites, we have not worked with them, but the agency I used to be employed with, Independent Living Resources, is using Take Charge and has created a hybrid, which is called the Take Charge Summer Institute. This is a shortened version of the original Take Charge, and it runs for two weeks during the late summer. There are several students at the middle school level that access that, who use aug-com devices for communication. Take Charge is being used for nonverbal individuals. It hasn't been used at one of our sites, but it is being used in the Summer Institute.

Alison Turner: Also, it will be used in the Milwaukee public schools this coming fall at one of their classes at Hamilton High School.

Participant (Donna Kindermen): Much of the kids that you have talked about having learning disabilities primarily, are there kids who fall into different categories of disability?

Dean Westwood: Well, Adam who was the last speaker from our group here experiences cerebral palsy and certainly there are a wide range of various issues or disabilities that our students face. The vast majority do experience learning or cognitive issues, but by no means does the program focus on those individuals.

Alison Turner: The original grant was field tested with teens with physical disabilities, chronic health challenges, and learning and emotional disabilities. So we really got a cross section of different kinds of challenges in our original field test. Does that answer your question?

Participant (Donna Kindermen): Yes it does. One more, if I may. Is there a curriculum that we could look at, or is there a final report for this grant that might be available for distribution?

Alison Turner: I'm going to be giving out my email address and I could also give you my phone number so you and I could talk further. I'd be glad to call you to discuss that with you.

Participant (Donna Kindermen): That would be great Alison, thank you.

John Johnson (NTA): Alison, this is John Johnson, and I'd like to ask a question of the mentees, if I may. Maybe direct this through both your group and Dean's group and let you field it. I'm interested in the one thing that each of the mentees liked the most about their mentorship. Whatever it is that strikes them that they really liked the most.

Alison Turner: Okay, I think Michelle would like to start.

Michelle Bettcher (Mentee): What I liked most about it was that my mentor and I got along, we got to talk about our feelings and talk about goals and what I was going to do.

Alison Turner: I heard a lot of the other things that some of these guys liked the most was going out on field trips, which is normal.

John Johnson: So everybody liked the activities that are associated with the mentorships. Is that what I'm hearing?

Dean Westwood: This is Dean, Jafet would like to speak to that.

Jafet Marino (Mentee): I like going out on the field trips, because Lawrence, he's smart, he doesn't put us in a room and start asking us questions. He takes us somewhere we like. He's funny. He'd ask us questions like if we were having problems and stuff, and that's what I like about it.

Alison Turner: Jesse Cruz, could you identify what you think that Jessie Camus likes the most about the mentorship?

Jesse Cruz (Mentor): Well, I guess we had some outings, like I said. I took him to some boxing matches and we went see some ice hockey and all that, and just being together with him. He was himself. Overall we're buddies now, we still hook up even though school's out, so there's a bond that way. Not only was I a mentor to him, we turned out to bond and we're friends, and here I'm 54 years old and he's only 16, so I'm kind of a role model for him. He knows what I've been through and I've changed my life, so he looks to me as a positive role model.

Alison Turner: Wasn't he having a real hard time for awhile, did you find him calling you a lot?

Jesse Cruz (Mentor): He was having a hard time due to a gang affiliation, he wanted to stay away from the gang and so he was going through some of those problems and then in the family structure at home. But I was there for him, I said, "You got to get a job, get to work." He found a job where he fills comfortable and not only that, he's a coach for a whole bunch of youngsters in basketball, so he's doing that on the side, too.

Alison Turner: Wonderful, thanks. Does anybody else have any questions?

Participant: I have a question, I'm Susan in Jacksonville, Florida. I work with people with visual disabilities, and in our community everything is very spread out. I'm wondering did your grant cover things like transportation and getting to the site where they needed to go? I remember hearing, I believe it was Jesse Cruz, saying something about how his mentee persevered even though maybe the parent wasn't able to participate or something. I guess I just don't really understand the whole picture as to how this comes about, because it seems that sometimes there are things that are offered in a community, but there's just not the ability to get where they are.

Alison Turner: We've really always tried to make a policy of not letting transportation be a barrier to kids participating in a Take Charge activity. Now, to answer your question, I think we have been able to put some funds into transporting the students and/or mentors who have transportation issues. Dean, you could address that a little bit more. We've relied also on volunteers and parent carpools.

Dean Westwood: Yes, this is Dean, certainly just to echo Alison's comment, what we did here was build up a group of individuals who were kind of our transportation individuals, that was either the mentors or the mentor coordinators, or anyone within Take Charge. And then also we picked a location for the workshops that was very well connected to mass transit. Now certainly that might not be viable options for everyone, but as Alison stated previously, we just made every effort to not let transportation be an issue. At each location, that would take a different form, so it's just a matter of brainstorming, and a lot of times somebody called the morning of a workshop, "Hey, my folks can't bring me, I can't access public transportation." So we were pretty much ready for anything with regards to transportation. Certainly we did have some funds around transportation, but our main resource was the individual mentors and mentor coordinators and the people involved with the Take Charge project.

Alison Turner: Also, we had a student here a couple of years ago at Take Charge who was a wheelchair user, who really knew nothing about the public transportation. I can tell you that the New Hampshire public transportation system is not there! But he and his mentor got together and learned all about the transportation that was available to him and now he accesses the community on his own all the time. So we've actually utilized the mentor/mentee relationship to help kids learn about public transportation too. That was a really successful thing for Tim, because he just never envisioned sitting in a pizza parlor in another town with a friend. He'd always been everywhere with his mother and just couldn't believe that he could actually go someplace on his own with a peer, instead of with his parent all the time.

Participant (Susan): That sounds really good, I also would want to get more information after your done.

Alison Turner: Okay, anybody else have any other questions?

Mary Mack: Oh, I have a quick one, this is Mary Mack. I was in charge of some mentoring programs here in Minneapolis and many of the people that were mentors had limited resources. What kinds of program support do you have for resources to ensure that mentors would be able to take young people out for a cup of coffee or whatever? Are there program support dollars to foster the mentor/mentee relationship when mentors may be economically disadvantaged?

Dean Westwood: For the workshop series and the group outings, we were reimbursing the mentors for any mileage that they incurred, and any out-of-pocket expense for an individual activity up to twenty dollars per activity. That certainly was written into the grant as funds that were needed. And then, as you probably know, they're always some expenses that are incurred in an individual activity, so the way we looked at it was not necessarily why we couldn't do it, what was going to keep these things from happening, but what we needed to do to make them happen. Just like with transportation funds, as long as it wasn't out of this world, we just allocated those funds to cover the expenses of the mentor/mentee going out and doing individual activities. Those were certainly written into the grant.

Alison Turner: If I could add to that too, one of the other things that we really found to be very helpful is getting a large group of people together with a lot of mentors, mentees, and project staff. I know Wisconsin had a lot of success where people who knew each other so well got some tickets to a hockey game. I know down in North Carolina, they went to a Duke basketball game, so it's kind of a little ingenuity, I guess you might call it, in terms of trying to keep your costs as low as possible, but being able to reimburse for some minimal activity costs. Does that answer you question Mary?

Mary Mack: Yes, it does.

Alison Turner: Are there any other questions?

Participant: This is Roy Kimble from Austin, Texas. I'm interested in how the Take Charge program directly ties in with current school-to-work efforts?

Alison Turner: Students in Take Charge begin to set some goals for their future planning. They identify support systems to achieve those particular goals and then they actually hold their own ITP meetings, which sometimes are piggybacked onto IEP meetings. I think you'll find that quite a bit of the material within the Take Charge curriculum really does meet many of the competencies of school-to-work initiatives, also.

John Johnson: Alison, if I could jump in here for a moment and maybe address that as well. One of the reasons we pulled this teleconference together was that there is research that has clearly identified one of the strongest predictors of success for kids who are transitioning from school to work and school to other adult life situations is the presence of an adult member in their life who they believe actual cares for them. This is consistent with a lot of the efforts that have come out of the transition literature in terms of self-determination and student involvement - getting kids involved with their IEPs, developing a sense of where they are going to go in the work environment, developing a sense of a career direction, etc.

Mentors are very clearly in an advantageous position to assist mentees, as for example, Jesse indicated. To get kids who are in high risk situations to look at work as, in affect, an intervention for some of the difficulties and challenges that they deal with. For example, getting a student to accept a job that he or she is actually comfortable with presents kind of a competition for their time, if that individual is also involved with gang activity. So there's a lot of issues that we deal with related to kids who are at risk, kids with disabilities. The mentorship project really offered some tremendous opportunities to focus kids on work-related and carer issues, get kids to value work, and then begin to drive their educational programs and look at where they're going to end up as adults. So that was the rationale for pulling this teleconference together and that's the connection with school-to-work. Now some of those connections are more conceptual than they are direct at this point, but you can see where we were headed in pulling this together. I hope that answers some of your questions.

Participant (Roy Kimble): Yes. Let me just say a word to the mentors and mentees. It is always helpful to hear from people who are benefiting from a program, and I am very grateful for the opportunities to hear from these people today, so thank you mentors and mentees and good luck to you!

John Johnson: Alison, Dean, the mentors and mentees. Again, I want to echo Roy's thank you for your participation in this teleconference. You added a quality and context to this that none of us could've added to it. Thank you so much for the amount of time and energy that you put into the preparation. It wouldn't have been the same without you.

Alison Turner: We thank you too for your support. We're really glad we had this opportunity to let people know the good things that are happening in mentoring around the country, so thank you.

Mary Mack: Well, I think our time is used up, its really gone quickly. Alison, you were going to give some email addresses and a telephone number?

Alison Turner: I have two email addresses. They are AlisonC.Turner@dartmouth.edu and AliTurner@aol.com. I have an office in my home and I can be reached at (603) 436-4843.

Dean Westwood: My email address is westwood@ohsu.edu.

Mary Mack: Okay. With that, we look forward to next month's call on Quality Work-Based Learning in New York State. Thank you all very much for participating.

National Transition Alliance for Youth with Disabilities (NTA) conference call presentations are sponsored by the NTA and coordinated by the National Transition Network. For a copy of this or other transcripts, contact us at:

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URL: http://ici1.umn.edu/ntn/audio/1997/jul.html
Posted March 9, 1998
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