A Mentoring Session

Today I, and several other women from our class, completed the mentoring part of our group project. We met with four girls from Whittier Elementary and discussed with them different characteristics of leaders, good leaders and bad leaders, and the kind of challenges women face when they are on their way to becoming leaders, just to name a few. I know all of us really enjoyed our time with the girls and they seemed to enjoy it too. The girls actually asked if we could do this again sometime. The fact that they wanted to do this again really made me feel like we made a difference in these girls' lives; maybe not a big difference, maybe not even a small difference.  Even if the only thing we accomplished today was the planting of a seed, a seed of new thoughts and new ways to see themselves and the world around them, I believe our time spent with them was well worthwhile.

The girls were very surprised to learn about the glass ceiling, being so young they had never had to think or talk about this before. It was actually quite hard to explain because we couldn't give them a good reason why men are often paid more than women when they are doing the exact same job. They had, however, felt the cold shoulder of discrimination before, though they did not know it. Many times they had been told by boys in their class that they couldn't do something or participate in an activity simply because they were girls. Even at this elementary school age, boys have already developed the habit of putting themselves above girls. This is an issue that must be recognized by school officials if this is ever to change. We talked to them about this and told them they are just as special and talented as boys are. They really seemed to enjoy this one-on-one girl time because Club Whittier is primarily made up of boys. They are outnumbered at least five to one and often even more. Being outnumbered as they are, we wanted them to know that there is network of women out there that they can look to for guidance and support, and I believe that they took this idea to heart.

I learned a lot from these girls today and I hope they learned as much from me. They took me back to a time when the world was so big and mysterious, a time when there were many things I didn't understand, or so I thought. I learned that many of the political leaders of our country, regardless of the party, are actually good people who try to do the right thing but sometimes "it just doesn't happen." I learned people who follow bad leaders are actually just a bunch of "goons" who don't know that they are doing bad things. I also learned that "if you want to be a leader, you have to be a leader for yourself first." In my opinion they have a better grasp on the world than I do. They made me ask myself, why do I always see the worst in our leaders and not the best? Why do I assume everyone who has ever made a horrible mistake is a bad person when I am clearly not even close to being this perfect good person that I envision a leader to be? Why do I try to prove myself in the eyes of everyone else, when the first person I should be proving myself to is me? I learned I need to take a step back sometimes and reevaluate myself as a person as well as a leader. I learned so much about leadership today, not from any book or prestigious speaker or special conference; I learned about leadership on the floor of a dusty old gym from four very special girls who taught me to look at the world through different eyes.