Stress, mentoring and having it all

Stress, mentoring and having it all: lectures focus on youth
The effects of stress and social pressures on young people are the topics of two upcoming lectures at the University of Auckland this month.

Boston University academic Professor Renée Spencer will present two lectures at the University’s Epsom Campus, one on youth mentoring and the other on stress in affluent adolescent girls.

Professor Spencer is the current University of Auckland Seelye Fellow and a Harvard PhD graduate.

In collaboration with the Faculty of Education and Social Work and the New Zealand Youth Mentoring Network, tonight in Auckland and Monday 8 May in Wellington, she will deliver the lecture “This changes (almost) everything: Youth initiated mentoring”.

“Adolescence is a time of heightened vulnerability for young people. They are trying to find their way and their place in the world. They’re being bombarded with new ways of engaging and connecting with the world. There is so much need for adult guidance,” she says.

Youth-initiated mentoring (YIM) is an innovative approach in which youth select adults to serve as mentors in formalized matches. Professor Spencer will present findings from two studies detailing the influence of YIM on the entire mentoring process, and implications for program practices discussed.

On Tuesday 9 May she will lecture on “Having it all? Affluent adolescent girls’ perceptions of stress and quests for success”.

Professor Spencer will draw on research from girls attending private single-sex secondary schools located in affluent suburbs of two metropolitan areas in the Midwest and Northeast United States where the staff started noticing heightened levels of stress and distress among girls.

“I would say amongst the girls that we worked with, from affluent families with high incomes and educated parents the pressure to succeed and be successful is intense.”

Professor Spencer says the pressure is high to not only succeed, but to “achieve at the highest level”.

They are perceived as being ‘highly resourced’ and having it all, when in fact their worlds are narrowly focussed to achieve and get into an elite university.

“These girls really had the sense there was no room to fail.”

Professor Spencer is a theoretical and applied expert in youth mentoring. As a Professor in Human Behaviour in the School of Social Work at Boston University, Spencer’s influential work has revealed the under-recognised role of parents in mentoring; particular contributions adult mentors make to the mentoring process; mentoring young people in foster-care; educational stress and adolescent girls’ development; and the complexity of how and why mentoring relationships end.

She has a breadth and depth of experiential and theoretical knowledge of tertiary institutions, schools, research clusters, as well as school teachers, youth practitioners, parents/caregivers and community and government agencies grappling with delivering positive youth outcomes through mentoring programmes and adult-youth partnerships.

For information on tonight’s lecture on youth mentoring and the May 9 lecture on stress in adolescent girls, visit Eventbrite.co.nzFor information on tonight’s lecture on youth mentoring and the May

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