And here's your list of students you'll be mentoring this year." With that, last August, every adult at our school was presented with a list of 12 or so student names. We were charged with developing relationships with each of these kids. We scanned our lists for names we knew, worried about those we didn't recognize, and in a few cases wondered, "What can I talk to that kid about? I'm not even sure he likes me."
We teach at Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego, a school with about 750 students—not an unmanageable size in secondary education. For a decade, we have worked toward building a school where relationships are central. Yet a humbling experience the previous year had caused us to see the students we didn't truly see.
During a professional learning event for the whole staff, charts containing the names of every student in the school were posted. Each of us received colored dot stickers and were told to place a dot next to the name of every student with whom we had conversations beyond the routine interactions of the classroom (there was no limit on the number of dots we could affix). You can imagine the excited buzz as dots bloomed next to names.
Then we stood back and gasped. Some students had lots of dots, others had fewer. But what startled everyone in the room was the fact that there were names with no dots next to them. We looked for patterns and discovered that some of these were the "hard-to-reach" kids we knew about, but many more were just quiet students who didn't call much attention to themselves. Some of those students had been attending our school for two years or more. We knew we had to do something different.
Why Mentoring?
Young people can benefit from mentoring relationships with caring adults. The term mentor comes from The Odyssey. Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to watch over his son, Telemachus, while Odysseus went off to fight in the Trojan War. Mentor became important to the young man, serving as a protector and advisor, offering counsel and wisdom.
Mentoring happens in the workplace and in education. Some teacher-induction programs position mentoring as a central component of shepherding novices into the profession. And mentoring programs—like the national program for young men of color, My Brother's Keeper—are widely used in industry to attract and retain a diverse talent pool.
Mentors can include family members, neighbors, and community leaders. But a significant number of adolescents (up to one in three) can't name someone they would consider their mentor, according to a report by the National Mentoring Partnership. That report also found that:
- Mentored students have a higher school attendance rate.
- Students with mentors are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities and sports (67 percent of mentored kids versus 37 percent of non-mentored ones).
- Mentored students are 55 percent more likely to enroll in college.
Although many educators know the predictive powers of the "ABCs" of school success—attendance, behavior, and course completion in reading and mathematics—mentoring is often overlooked in school improvement and intervention plans. Educators may perceive (often wrongly) that community-based and religious organizations are providing such supports. Some schools institute peer-mentoring, which is valuable, but can't provide the same kind of guidance that adult mentoring can. To be clear, all these sources of mentoring are crucial. No student should be limited to just one type of mentoring. But schools are in a unique position to provide layers of mentoring, beginning with school adults.
A Mentoring Program Is Born
The mentoring program at Health Sciences High began germinating the day we realized too many students had little connection to a staff member. We began with simple math, dividing the number of students by the number of adults on campus to yield an average number—11. So 11 students were assigned to every adult, including administrators and clerical staff, teachers, and paraprofessionals. We set some parameters, such as having all students assigned to each adult come from the same grade level to make contact easier. Beyond that, a computer algorithm randomly assigned mentees to each adult.
The lists were distributed at a meeting during planning week. After everyone looked at their list, they had 15 minutes to make changes due to special circumstances (such as a pre-existing strained relationship with a particular student). One staff member coordinated these efforts, and within 30 minutes, the lists were settled.
Our school hasn't placed much structure around how mentors work with mentees. It's our first year at this, and we want to see what natural patterns emerge. We were simply instructed to maintain regular contact with our mentees. At the onset, some mentors wrote a note attached to a token item to introduce themselves. Doug made calls to each of his mentees. Nancy sent handwritten cards with her contact information home to families after she met with all her mentees. Some staff members host lunches in their classrooms to meet with mentees as a group; others arrange more informal meetings. It's been interesting to watch these relationships evolve and take on a more natural rhythm.
In the video accompanying this column, school administrator Dominique Smith holds an impromptu meeting to check in with one of his mentees. They talk about family, the student's current grades, and the fire science career-education pathway this 10th grader is enrolled in. Notice that Dr. Smith doesn't attempt to solve his student's issues himself, but helps the student make a plan of action. The whole conversation took 10 minutes (this is an edited version). After this meeting, Dr. Smith commented, "It's great to hear I'm not the only one he sees as a mentor. He talks about his family and his fire science instructor, too. I see my role as making sure he has … multiple supports in his life."
Mentors Need Support, Too
Our understanding of what mentors need to develop and sustain relationships is evolving. We include "monthly mentoring" checks on our professional learning days so that the group can problem solve together. At times, informal mentors (those who already had a relationship with the student) can offer further insight. In addition, separate from our mentoring program, we meet as a school staff for 10 minutes each morning. Earlier in the year, we asked one adult each day to briefly explain during this time what he or she was doing to foster a relationship with mentees. This has built the collective resources of the staff as they advocate for students.
We recently tried an exercise to help mentors reflect on their mentoring relationships. School leaders gave each adult the academic transcript of one of their mentees and had them reflect on the following questions:
- What are this student's aspirations?
- What are his or her concerns, fears, or worries?
- What current success has he or she experienced?
- What talent does this student possess?
Mentors then reflected on the extent to which they could answer these questions for each of their mentees. This helped us notice where we're connecting and where we need to double our efforts.
If you sense our mentoring effort is a work in progress, you're correct. We still have more questions than answers. But we knew from the dot activity last year that we needed to do something. And the best solutions usually begin with the words, "Something I could do is …"
