Guidelines for Mentoring Report and Journal (Gender Class):
Psychology and Gender, SOP 4702
Samuel R. Mathews, Assoc. Professor
The Department of Psychology
Mentoring Journal:
For each visit, mentors are to record at least one significant event that occurred during the weekly
mentoring sessions. For example, the protégé may discuss something important that happened at school or
an event that occurred within the family or peer group. You might observe some interesting interaction
between the protégé and her or his peers at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club or school. The event may involve
some aspect of the interaction between you and your protégé. Remember, even seemingly small events can
be significant. Sometimes the event might consist of a general sense of the session that was different from
previous sessions. The event might even be something that involved the staff of the Club or school.
Following your description of the event, record your reactions to the event. Consider what it might have
meant to your protégé or what it meant to you. You might record your emotional reaction to the event. You
may have questions about the event. Those questions would fit within your reactions.
The journal should include the dates and times of the mentoring session. Please remember, that your
protégé deserves respect in terms of identifying her or him outside the bounds of the site of the mentoring
and your interactions with the staff of the Club or school. If you put the name of your protégé in your
journal, please share your journal with no one except me.
Mentoring Report
Your final report for the mentoring experience during the fall semester is a major component of your efforts
to learn from the interactions with your protégé. It allows you to reflect upon and analyze your experiences.
There are several components involved with the framing of your report.
Mentoring Context and Protégé
 This section should provide the reader with a description of the context in which the mentoring
took place. It includes a brief description of the physical environment in which you typically
conducted the mentoring session. For example, if it was the B & G Club, you might describe the
room (private, in the midst of other boys and girls, etc.,) and general milieu in which the
mentoring occurred. This section is where you describe your protégé. Sex, age, grade in school
and race are clearly factors to be included. You might also describe the family structure from
which your protégé came (e.g. single parent, two parent, and extended family). Include any
information you consider relevant for the reader. Remember, please do not include information
that would identify your protégé.
Mentoring Experiences
 The main body of the report will contain your own analysis of your experiences as a mentor. The
data for this part of the report will emerge from your journal entries and from your own
recollections and feelings about the experience as a whole. You might choose to recount changes
that occurred within your own sense of the mentoring experience across your visits with your
protégé. You might also choose to include a sense of your protégé’s changes as you have observed
them across the visits. Another approach might be to select key experiences, describe and interpret
them. Basically this section provides you the opportunity to reflect on your own experience and
your perception of your protégé’s experiences. Another approach is to ask your protégé to reflect
on the experiences and share her or his perceptions. That may prove to be an interesting approach
as well.
 As a part of the body of the report, you will select some aspect of the experience that relates to
gender. It might be how your relationship might be shaped based on the matched gender of the
mentor-protégé team. How might male-male pairs differ from female-female pairs or mixed
gender pairs? If you were to reflect on the activities selected during the semester, how might they
reflect a gender perspective? This element of the report should reflect some reference to an
authoritative source that can include but is not limited to the textbook.
Reflections and Recommendations
 Here you are invited to provide a general reflection on the experience. It is more than simply a
summary of the two previous sections. This includes more of your sense of the experience. This
section also includes suggestions for the program based on your own experiences over the
semester. Another element that is included in this section includes your own ideas for how you
might change your interactions with the protégé to include overall communication style, selection
of activities, or other areas of change.
Remember, this is a commitment for an academic year. As the semester winds down, you will reaffirm
your promise to continue participation and maintain the trust with your protégé.
Mentor Journal
Name of Mentor: _____________________________ Date of visit:______________
Location of visit: _______________________ (B&G Club, school, elsewhere)
Description of Significant Event:
Interpretation or Reflections:
Comment or Questions: