After pondering how loaded with talent, experience, knowledge and expertise our MSCSW members are, I thought it would be absolutely wonderful for us to link up with and share our gifts through mentoring the burgeoning number of social work students in our three St. Louis social work schools. Hence, I initiated our MSCSW Mentoring Program that we hope you will want to participate in now. Your entire Board is solidly and happily behind this new project! We hope you will be, too.
.If you are willing to share
a couple of hours a month mentoring a social work student (or a first- or second-year social worker who desires mentoring), then please
read the guidelines and
fill out and return the application to become an MSCSW Mentor. They are simple, easy documents to read and complete, and will take only 5 minutes of your time. Either email your completed application to Nicki McClusky at
findyourvoice(at)earthlink.net or snail mail it to at 721 Villa Capri Court, St. Louis, MO 63132.
How this works: initially, you and a Mentee (who has also read the guidelines for the program and filled out an application for Mentoring) will be paired up. You, the Mentor, will initially contact the student. If the two of you feel like you’re a match, then you, together, will set up how, when and where you will meet. It can be by phone, in person, over lunch, at your house, office, The Bread Company (or elsewhere), taking a walk, etc. You may decide to sit down together for an hour, and then be available for 10 min. phone chats later in the month or as questions come up in the Mentee’s mind. Or you might plan two 45 min. or 60 min. mentoring sessions (or whatever works for the two of you) per month. You’ll decide if you meet in the summer or not. Then we’ll begin again in the fall.
What Students seem to want: from my meeting with students in the small group mentoring meeting Jan. 28th, MSW students seem to really enjoy talking to someone who is experienced in the field, to find out how it really is “out there.” They “think” they know where they’d like to focus their energies (and have to “pick”) where they’d like to serve, and yet (as we all likely remember) it’s difficult to make these choices based on limited experience. So, talking to someone who’s out practicing in the clinical arena, whether it be in private practice or within an agency, hospital, hospice, or other clinical social work setting, will likely be of great interest, value and help to students.
Mentees: get to bounce their ideas off of a mentor, ask questions about things that interest/concern them, pick our brains, learn about “how it now is out there,” gain support and encouragement right now for all that they’re learning and doing, be able to talk about their challenges and concerns as students and practicum clinicians, and have this new person in their life they can consult about clinical social work issues of all sorts. Hopefully, we will be wise enough to listen well, respond to what they really want and need, and be of generative service to this new, burgeoning clinical social worker.
Mentors: get to have a fulfilling experience with their Mentee, and be that unique person in the student’s life who is without expectation, desire, or agenda. We are there to support, advice, guide, and encourage. We do not supervise, and yet we can discuss how we think, how we serve, how we practice, etc. We have yet another opportunity to model exquisite self care and powerful listening skills (without having to provide therapy to anyone). And we get to have fun!
The Program: It’s pretty flexible right now. We’d like to assign Mentors to Mentees within the new couple of weeks while the interest is high for the students who have applied. We have about 10-15 requests for Mentors right now, and I’m sure this list will grow over the coming years.
Small Group Mentoring Program: This is different from yet adjunct to the individual mentoring program. The next meeting will be in April 22nd; the students seemed to enjoy discussing their programs and topics that came up, and wanted to meet again in the small group after they’d had a chance to meet with their individual mentors. I will be asking an MSCSW member to lead the April meeting; I’ll introduce them to the students on Sunday at 5:00 p.m.
If you have any other questions, just holler. Call: 314.432.2549. If you call, please leave me times and numbers (prior to 7:00 p.m.) you’d be available for a return phone call. I’m up early.
Warmly,
Nicki McClusky
MSCSW Board Member
February 7, 2007
