Define the concept of mentoring. In my opinion, mentoring is the association of a
more experienced person with that of a less experienced one. The goal in this association is to help the less experienced person mature quicker in association with a particular identified need. Therefore, mentoring for youth could be defined as the association of an approved mentor with a student in their academic environment for learning. The goal of such an association would be to benefit the well being of the student, by providing a role model, that can support the student academically, socially, and/or personally. So then, is there a need for mentoring in high schools? According to an article by Gregory P. Hickman and Deiedre Wright (2011) entitled “Academic and school behavioral variables as predictors of high school graduation at-risk adolescents enrolled in a youth-based mentoring program,” the answer to that question would be
“yes.” According to this article a sample of 447 at-risk high school students, who attended a mentoring program over a 10 year period were examined utilizing official school data (Cincinnati Public School System). The study included 273 males (61.1%) and 174 females (38.9%). There ages ranged from 10 - 18 (Hickman & Wright, 2011).
The data examined 355 African Americans (79.4%), Caucasians (19.9%), and Asians
(0.7%). The grade levels of the participants were high school 326 (72.9%), middle school 105 (23.5%), and elementary school 16 (3.6%). The program resulted in 299
(66.9%) graduating high school, and 148 (33.1%) who dropped out of school or the mentoring program (Hickman & Wright, 2011). The statistics suggest that students who remained in the program are more likely to graduate high school juxtaposed by those who did not attend or who dropped out of the program. Based on these types of
Dr. Grays
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positive indicators high schools absolutely need mentoring programs. At East
Cleveland there is a mentoring program in place that is peer based and pairs an upper class student with a lower class student. I don't like the program as I don't believe that it is very well ran and I think that older more mature individuals are needed to mentor.
East Cleveland has a whole myriad or problems with the behavior of the students there.
Most of them are not ready to be mentors."
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In my opinion, a school based mentoring program is one that has been
established in an academic environment such as a high school. The mentor is paired with a student based on the policies and/or curriculum established by the program.
After which, the mentor presents him/herself as a mature role model who can help with school work or other assignments."
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How effective are mentoring programs? Mentoring programs are quiet effective.
“Currently, more than 5000 mentoring programs serve and estimated 3 million youths in the United States” (DuBois, Portillo, Rhodes, Siverthorn, & Valentine, 2011). In the article, “How effective are mentoring programs for youth” the authors ‘use meta analysis" to take stock of the current evidence on the effectiveness of mentoring programs for youth” (DuBois, Portillo, Rhodes, Siverthorn, & Valentine, 2011). The article concludes, based on its analysis of “73 independent evaluations of mentoring programs directed towards children and adolescents…that overall findings support the effectiveness of mentoring for improving outcomes across, behavioral, social, emotional, and academic domains of young peoples developments” (DuBois, Portillo, Rhodes, Siverthorn, &
Valentine, 2011). Research such as this one suggest that there are a myriad of variables that make mentoring programs effective, however, in the final analysis it is
