How can we engage student mentors in praxis?

At Bunker Hill Community College, a cohort of student mentors help with teaching and facilitation in first-year seminars. Outside of class, working with their mentees can range from the academic to the personal—anything that can help first-year students persist to the next semester. In 2014, I supervised this mentoring program, and I was concerned with helping the cohort develop action and care. As Paulo Freire writes, “liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their in order to transform it” (79). How might praxis positively impact mentoring relationships?

Inspired by Austin Kleon, I designed a tactile activity intended to replicate what Freire describes as the simultaneous occurrence of reflection and action. Through the activity, mentors constructed a “family tree” of their mentors, highlighting which individuals and relationships enabled and affirmed their current mentoring work.