Mentor program helps gifted students grow

Program provides a priceless contribution to education, writes Melanie Jackson.

Recently I heard that the Vancouver school board may cut its mentorship program. Through the program, begun in 1992, professionals donate their time to work with gifted Grade 4-6 students on projects from physics to food to genomics to art to architecture — you name it.

Here’s the math on the program. Each year 60 professionals give at least 10 hours to mentor students interested in their field. Most mentorships go many hours beyond that.

So 600 donated hours, minimum. And the entire program is administered through just one full-time teacher position.

I don’t think we need a cost-benefit-analysis expert to mentor us on this one. Chopping the program doesn’t make sense. Then why do it?

The answer may lie in a misconception. Gifted students are the golden ones, the blessed, the lucky. A sparkling life path stretches ahead of them. Kids like that don’t need extras.

Well, yes, they do. Gifted students’ exceptional talent or ability often makes them different, and not in a superhero type of way. Different can mean not fitting in. Different can mean not being accepted, not belonging. For that reason, gifted students may reach adulthood without having developed social skills.

I’ve been a creative-writing mentor for many years through the VSB program. I remember some of the odder-duck mentees very well. One student refused ever to meet my eyes as we talked. She just sat and drew earthworm comics. I think I still have some. Another student couldn’t stop saying he was sorry; it was like a nervous tic.

They would have exasperated me except for two things. One, their writing was imaginative, inspired, original.

Two, they reminded me of another student many years ago. Immersed in suspense stories and films, she arrived in Nice with several other girls on a school trip. She thought of Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief, set right there on the Riviera. “What a great setting for jewel robberies!” she exclaimed.

You guessed it. That girl was me. I remember the strange looks I got; the tut-tuts and murmurings.

So, I understand the girl who drew earthworm comics and the boy who kept apologizing for no reason. Gifted students are wrapped up in writing or insects or photography or whatever. It’s their world. The outside world isn’t always the ideal fit — which tends to make them more anxious and stressed than their classmates.

Not all gifted students are overtly odd-duck. But all need encouragement, which is where mentors come in.

In a graduate studies paper for the University of Victoria this year, Deanna Reid writes, “Giftedness is a special need and students … need to receive support within school to reach their potential. … Mentoring programs provide students with a challenge and expose them to unique opportunities that they would not have access to in the school system. Mentoring allows students to interact with adults with similar interests and abilities, which will motivate and focus their learning.”

I’ve attended many end-of-year VSB mentorship celebrations. Students display the projects they’ve worked on with their mentors’ guidance. One kid, mentored by an engineer, even built a wind tunnel.

A friend’s son, Ben, now in Grade 12 and a future police officer, recalls his experience with a cop mentor: visits with the Dog Squad, Emergency Response Team and Drug Squad; walking the beat in the Downtown Eastside; a lesson in fingerprinting; going out on the water with the Marine Squad.

Measured in money, all the mentors’ donated hours just for one year would run into the high thousands. Measured in value, their donation is priceless. Please, VSB. Don’t cut the mentorship program. Make the difference that these kids need. I’ll even throw in some earthworm comics.

All the mentors’ donated hours just for one year would run into the high thousands.