by Marian Brown
At the end of the last class, and our last blog narrative, the students were departing Cheryl’s room with an assignment in hand. Their homework for the week was to take the value sort and ask an adult they admired to fill it out, the exact same exercise they had been asked to do in class. The students were already buzzing with excitement and were discussing the value sort when the period began.
Prior to this week’s session the students had completed the assignment and put it in Cheryl’s box so that she could compile the answers for comparison across the students and their interviewees. Before sharing the results of the two value sorts, Cheryl asked the students which values they believed they chose most frequently. One student, Sarah, commented, “I believe that the values of honesty and integrity will be at the top as they are values that we discuss often at Arlington.” Another student, Liza, gave a varying view, “I think fame and money will be ranked highly amongst us because as young adults the only person we are really responsible for is ourselves, and so it’s ok for us to be more selfish.” A third student, Steve, shared another perspective, “I believe that hard work is important to all of us and will be reflected in our answers.”
Chatter broke out amongst the students as Cheryl displayed the overhead of tally marks illustrating the students’ most highly picked values. The values picked as the most important were honesty, rewarding and supportive relationships, independence and quality. The least important were fame, success, spirituality, wealth and material well-being. Cheryl asked the students how these values related to their good work. Ann, a generally reserved student spoke up, “All of these values affect how we approach our work. If we didn’t value these things then we wouldn’t be doing as high quality of work. A lot of how we came to understand these values comes from our mentors.”
Cheryl built on Ann’s comment about mentors by asking the students who they valued as mentors. Students echoed the importance of parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings, and coaches. Not surprisingly, these were many of the people the students shared the value sort with. Cheryl then displayed the values most frequently picked by the mentors interviewed. The top three values picked were honesty, integrity, and quality. The students were surprised to see so much overlap there was between their mentors and their own answers. Cheryl looked at Ann, and gave her a knowing smirk as Ann’s comment had some validity; there was a strong correlation between mentor and student values in this sampling. The correlation between mentor and student values, as seen in this classroom, points to the idea that our values are indeed influenced and decided by those we admire and look up to. This beckons the question of how important affective mentorship is in one’s development and in one’s understanding of values. How can we as educators create and sustain healthy mentorships where positive values can be instilled?
Teaching Note: Creating Safe Environments:
Cheryl always supports the students in sharing their opinions and refrains from passing judgment on their answers. She simply acknowledges their comments, creating an environment of acceptance and safety. This building of environment is key while discussing difficult and personal issues as and opinions as things like the value sort do. It allows for all opinions to be heard.