Sustained Mentoring of Students of Color

Abstract

Using a testimonio (Beverley, 1989) in two voices, we discuss the mentoring practices in one Ed.D. Program in Educational Leadership at a large urban public university in California through the eyes of one mentee, Author1, and her mentor, Author2. We discuss our relative roles, how we learned from each other, and the practices that supported Author1’s success through the lens of shared authority (Frisch, 2003; Wong, 2016), a term used to describe the interviewee-interviewer relationship in oral histories. We borrow the term shared authority as it embodies “the cultivation of trust, the development of collaborative relationships, and shared decision-making” (High, 2009, p. 13) that became part of our shared story as Author1 navigated her doctoral studies through graduation and beyond. The following testimonio describes how we both approached this relationship and how it evolved over the course of Author1’s Ed.D. journey and beyond.