My First Mentor

My first professional mentor taught me how to play backgammon. I met him in fifth grade, when I had the good fortune to be sent to the local middle school every Friday for a brand new program for gifted students. 

I was pretty happy about the new program, which was better than the one I’d been in up until that point at my home school, Herbert Mills Elementary: 

Reading a textbook a couple years ahead of the one the other students were using behind the classroom door, while I sat by myself in the hallway.

There were all sorts of wonderful things about this gifted program. One of them was the eccentric and open-minded teacher, a woman about the same size as the students with red hair, whose name I don’t remember.

When I saw the Magic School Bus years later with my own kids, Ms. Frizzle perfectly personified our gifted teacher. She challenged our thinking in all sorts of ways, while we (truly) sat under a large plastic bubble on the floor, but most importantly she taught us that we were all innovators, not weirdos. 

As a nerdy tween girl, this teacher’s reassurance was an important confidence-booster. You have to picture me at the time to really get this. To my mother, I was a button, but a quick look at this photo will rapidly demonstrate how out of pace I was with the realities of the late 1970s classroom experience. 

Safe to say that the kids from That 70s Show did not welcome me to their circle. Simply put, I had no business with that perm. And I hadn’t yet received the memo that wearing jeans and t-shirts was better for my social life than the J.C. Penney girls’ size 12 printed dresses also being more cutely worn by five-year-olds that same school year.

Back to my mentor. One of the amazing aspects of the gifted program involved having a grown-up come once a month to visit with each student. I do not remember my mentor’s name, but he always wore a suit and looked very professional. He had clean, trimmed nails and wore a different aftershave than my dad. I noticed these things because we were regularly sitting across from each other at a small table, and my mentor was the only other adult male I had to compare with my dad at that same level of closeness.

I’m embarrassed to say that I also have no recollection of his career, which was likely the purpose of him coming to visit me. They tended to match students with mentors in their areas of giftedness. Mine was writing, so he likely did something along those lines for his work.

The best thing about this experience was he taught me how to play backgammon, and I got a backgammon set for Christmas that year. I love board games, and playing them is still something I enjoy. I remember the feeling of planning ahead for each move, and how the pieces felt gliding across the felt on the board.

In retrospect, another really important thing about my mentor was this: He was a Black man.

Growing up in a white working-class family in the communities of Reynoldsburg and Pickerington, Ohio, I had little interaction with any person who wasn’t white, or with anyone who wasn’t working class. My backgammon-teaching mentor gave me my first meaningful exposure to a professional person and to a Black person.

Playing a high-end board game is a pretty intellectual way to hang out. This was right up my alley, and I’m glad to have learned it from such a patient mentor willing to spend time teaching a hard game to a fifth-grade nerd with bad hair.

In my career, I have had the opportunity to serve as a mentor to many. Some of the students I’ve taught at The Ohio State University over the past eight years have become mentees, and a few of the younger people I’ve had the pleasure to supervise and call my colleagues have done the same. For the most part, I’ve mentored young women, but also some young men, some Black and some white. 

The one thing that I hope my mentees get from me is that same patience, strategy and commitment of time for learning. And honestly, I feel like my mentees also mentor me. It’s refreshing and energizing.

There’s something wonderful about mentoring people of different ages, cultures and races. It enriches our lives, and by engaging together we share a common bond in thinking at a higher level. Let’s keep collaborating with others who think and look different. It matters today more than ever.