Mentoring helps students succeed
The Daily Mail and The Chatham Courier
Jan. 27, 2009

GREENE/COLUMBIA — When Jackie Hoffman started working as a guidance counselor at Chatham Middle School in 1992, she said, she met a lot of students she wished she could bring home.

There were 500 students in the school and only one of her, and she could not provide all the attention those students needed.

Hoffman started a mentoring program at the school the next year that matched about 10 students with 10 adults. This year, participation is at 37 — and counting. Hoffman said she had a student ask to join the program as recently as mid-January.

Many of the students also continue with the program throughout middle school.

“Mentors are just a great asset to this school,” Hoffman said, “and an integral part of the guidance program.”

Adult mentors in Chatham generally hear of the program through other mentors and through the program’s own outreach to adult groups. Interested adults have to apply for the program through the school’s guidance department in order to be cleared to come into the building and meet with students.

The program is open to any student who wishes to have a mentor, and the department tries to match students with mentors who have similar interests, Hoffman said.

Most students and their mentors meet at school, taking over an empty classroom once a week for about an hour. Hoffman said that some mentors and students do meet up off school grounds with parental permission.

Typically all of the students and their mentors get together bi-monthly. In the fall, they organize a Halloween event for younger students, and there is also a winter holiday party. In the spring they go to a show at Proctors’ Theater in Schenectady, and make rockets with the school science teacher.

Last year, students and their mentors visited an area nursing home. “I’m a real believer in intergenerational linking,” Hoffman said.

Cynthia Richardson has been a mentor with the school’s program since 1996.

Richardson, who like many mentors with the school program is a retired teacher, said the activities she does with her students vary with each participant.

Some students want to play games or go for walks and others just want to talk, she said.

Richardson said she hopes she helps her students maintain balance in their lives. “I do it on faith that any contact with a child will make a difference,” she said.

Hoffman and other local counselors, teachers and administrators have found that mentoring programs in their schools have helped students excel academically and socially.

Teachers and parents have reported back to the department that after joining the program, students with mentors have better attendance records, higher grades and seem generally happier in school than they were before joining, Hoffman said.

Corbette Russell, who co-coordinates the mentor program at Cairo-Durham Middle School, said she hopes students in her school also benefit from the program.

Mentors at her school include teachers, school aids and district bus drivers, who, like in Chatham, are screened for approval.

Russell said that 30 students participate every year on average, and roughly 85 percent of them stay involved with the program for multiple years.

She said that a few students who are now in high school volunteer with classes at the elementary school.

Russell explained that the hour-long weekly meetings between mentors and students give students something to look forward to if they are struggling in school. “Kids just want to be a part of something,” she said.

In January 2002, the Harvard Mentoring Project of the Harvard School of Mental Health and MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership launched the first annual National Mentoring Month.

Directors of the first campaign hoped their efforts would encourage adults and organizations to get involved with helping children and teenagers excel academically or lay the groundwork for a healthy lifestyle.

Susan Moses, co-director of the project, said the campaign was started as a public health initiative to combat academic and non-academic issues, including teenage pregnancy.

She said that choosing the first month of the year had many advantages. Television advertising costs are lowest after Christmas, she said, and a January campaign can tie becoming a mentor to making a New Year’s resolution.

In a departure from their past campaign featuring celebrities, the project recently launched the Reel People campaign, in which mentor-mentee pairs were asked to send in tapes of how mentioning has changed their lives. The winning pair is featured in a public service announcement on the project’s Web site.

The New York State Education Department has adapted mentor programs designed for students to help newly certified teachers pick up additional teaching or class management skills from seasoned veterans and to ease the transition into a new work environment.

Since 2004, newly certified teachers have had to be paired with a mentor during their first year of teaching or participate in a school building leadership service.

At Chatham Middle School, Hoffman said she once read that adults rarely let children talk for more than three or four minutes before interrupting them. She said that many children just want someone to listen to them.

“Kids need to be heard,” she said.