It's National Museum Mentoring Month: Learn more about mentoring from Ashley Mask
Ashley Mask's article "Mentoring Up, Down, and Sideways: Reciprocity and Care in the Museum Education Field" offers new frameworks for reconsidering the role of mentoring in the museum education field; both for newcomers and for museum professionals with many years of experience.
Recent literature on mentoring revises the long-held notion of a dyadic, master-apprentice affiliation to better reflect the fluid, flexible, and even non-hierarchical dynamics that occur between mentors and mentees today.
When I entered the museum education profession almost 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to find people to mentor me. As I advanced in the field, I began mentoring educators that I hired. I quickly noticed that while I had something to share based on my experiences in the field, I was also learning a lot from my mentees. Their backgrounds, identities, and career trajectories looked different than mine.
