Supporting Diversity within the International Internship Experience
Session Description (for use in the program and for marketing purposes)
Internships provide students opportunities to practice their skills, hone their abilities, and prepare for their future career. To support future generations, many recreational therapists have taken great personal responsibility in supervising student interns. While many have reported positive experience and benefits from their mentoring experiences, mentors and protégés can experience difficulties in their relationship, especially when mentor-mentee share different cultural or social backgrounds. In this session, we will review literature concerning the benefits associated with mentoring and factors that affect the mentoring relationships. We will then discuss how to support international interns and encourage attendees to share their mentoring experiences. Recommendations for mentoring interns with demographic dissimilarity will be discussed.