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Youth Bear Witness To Mentoring Of The Black Church For College Readiness, Mary Louise Buckley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation in practice examines the college readiness of five African American high school male students in urban schools in Pittsburgh, PA based on their participation in a middle school mentoring program sponsored by an urban Black church. Situated within Michael Dantley’s critical spirituality theory and critical race theory, the author analyzed youths’ counter-narrative experiences of being mentored for college readiness in the Black church. The students had informal conversations with the researcher using a grounded theory approach to the semi-structured interview format. Students found mentors to be relatable advocates to their lived experiences in schools. In addition, the mentoring …