Tuesday, June 14, 2016

What do you expect from a good writing mentor?

The question


That was the question posed to our writers last spring. What’s your response?

According to the SLCC Community Writing Center, mentors direct conversations, collect member feedback, identify strategies that work, listen for members’ wants and needs, and share information with SLCC Community Writing Center

A visiting mentor posed this question: "What is the group looking for in terms of a mentor?"

We used this question as our writing “warm up.” Here were our group members' responses to this open-ended statement, “A good mentor…” 

How do our responses compare to your response?

Draft of a Story

Our response


A good mentor…

§  needs to know the meaning of education.
§  must open our minds to help us learn.
§  knows what I have to know.
§  doesn’t do the work, but guides the work, based on what we want or need.
§  comes prepared, not just with plans and lessons to move our group forward, but also comes prepared to abandon or modify those plans based on auditory and visual feedback from group members. 
§  figures out how to include all of our wants, needs, and concerns, without excluding any of us.
§  is passionate about writing.
§  makes us feel motivated to learn and improve.
§  gives us hard words to read, spell, and write.
§  asks lots of questions, listens to responses, and connects us to resources to help us meet our goals.
§  directs our conversation to stay positive and writing based.
§  learns as much as, if not more than, the group members.
§  is also a viable group member.
§  helps us write stories and fix our spellings.

Call to Action


We are looking for excellent mentors and tutors.

Our writing mentors come to us through SLCC Community Writing Center. The writing center trains mentors for their many different writing groups across Salt Lake City. Interested? Contact them.

You will be awesome!


(Are you looking for a good writing group? Check out the writing groups sponsored by SLCC Community Writing Center. Or, search the web for writing groups sponsored by other writing organizations.)

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