Mentors making a difference

Mentorship is not a new idea in education circles, but it’s having something of a moment right now in schools.

Research has shown kids with mentors are less likely to miss school, more likely to enroll in college, less likely to show symptoms of depression and tend to hold more positive beliefs about their ability to succeed in school.

Before Christmas, Columbus city government and the Columbus City Schools announced a joint push for more adult mentors for young people, within the schools and outside of them. A recruitment meeting will be held at 9 a.m. Tuesday on the lower level of Jerry Hammond Center, 1111 E. Broad St.

Columbus schools can point to successes within its two-year-old mentoring program. When adult mentors were paired with high-school seniors in the Class of 2017 at risk of not graduating, 75 percent graduated on time, said Alesia Gillison, the district’s chief academic officer.

Gillison worked with a 12th grader at South High School last school year. At first the girl wasn’t showing up to school, and the building principal would call Gillison to let her know.

“I would leave my office, drive to her house and ring the doorbell,” she said. “That blew her away.”

Once the girl revealed what was going on, Gillison passed that information on to a social worker. “We were able to remove some of those obstacles,” she said.

Then they turned to her future, with Gillison making the girl aware of “a plethora of scholarships” available. “Now I’m proud to say that this year, she’s attending Central State University on a scholarship,” Gillison said.

Solid commitment and availability during the school day are a must from would-be mentors. Participants go through a background check and training. The students interview potential mentors and pick the one with whom they feel comfortable.

“Many of our students are economically disadvantaged, and just having someone that believes in them, that believes in their potential, makes the difference,” Gillison said.

Ziyan Sears, a senior at Olentangy High School, says he could have used a mentor a few years ago, so he started a group there to help younger students called PRIDE, or “Promoting Respect for Individual Identity & Diversity through Education & Empowerment.”

Sears said he struggled with his identity as a studious black student in a mostly white school.

“I heard things like, ‘ You’re the whitest black kid I’ve ever seen,” Sears said. “... They called me an Oreo. ... That’s not something that a 14- or 15- year- old needs to reconcile by themselves.”

He eventually found safety and identity in his school guidance counselor’s office, hanging out and bonding with a group of students, and that’s where the idea for PRIDE came to him.

In its first full school year, PRIDE has 28 upperclass mentors for 20 younger mentees. They talk about study habits, what to do about bad friends and girlfriendboyfriend troubles, and sometimes problems at home.

Sears mentors an underclassman whose grades had been suffering but turned things around and got all B’s on his exams.

“I know he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been riding him about it,” Sears said.

Worthington schools is also launching a mentoring program this month. Jennifer Wene, a retired Worthington administrator, patterned it after the Columbus schools program. It will start small, with 15 at- risk students meeting with adult community members during the school day.

The commitment is once a week during the school day, and if possible, the mentor advises the student all the way to graduation. There are ground rules: No texting or social media or meeting outside of school between mentors and students. Adults have to be careful how much they share of their own lives, but allow the kids to share theirs.

And there are times when a mentor has to break confidence and tell school officials when something has happened to a student, such as in cases of abuse and neglect.

Wene said there seems to be a lot of interest in mentoring.

“Because there’s so much divisiveness and negativity,” she said, “the natural response on the part of humanity is to say, ‘ This is not how we want to be.’”