February 1999 National Center To Strengthen Student Mentoring Projects
"Mentoring has been around literally for centuries, and this program will bring together both new and old ideas." -Dr. Kay Davis, Director of the National Mentoring Center The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory has added another area of expertise to its growing roster of targeted training and technical assistance services. A new mentoring center will help schools and communities across the country establish and operate effective student mentoring programs to increase academic performance, improve school attendance, and reduce juvenile delinquency and gang participation.
Supported by a $2 million, two-year grant from the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), NWREL's National Mentoring Center will operate in collaboration with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America, one of the nation's oldest youth mentoring organizations, and Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization widely recognized for its studies and evaluations of the effectiveness of mentoring programs.
Working parents, overcrowded schools, and geographic mobility all contribute to decreased adult involvement in children's lives. Research shows that this decrease has been linked to a number of consequences for youth, from lowered career aspirations to truancy to juvenile crime. In an effort to counteract these negative effects, schools, social service agencies, and community organizations are turning to mentoring programs as a way to strengthen students' chances for success by providing them with greater access to involved adults and the wealth of resources those adults possess.
"School-community mentoring programs can offer students new avenues for exploring educational and career paths, stronger incentives for staying in school, and increased confidence to succeed," says Dr. Ethel Simon-McWilliams, the Laboratory's Executive Director/CEO. Unlike "natural mentoring" relationships with family and friends, "planned mentoring" programs match a young person in need of support with a caring adult mentor for a long-term, one-to-one relationship with specific objectives and goals.
Mentoring programs can be designed for students of all ages and from all segments of the student population. Programs are currently operated across the country by business and industry, schools, community-based organizations, religious organizations, professional organizations, colleges, and all levels of government. OJJDP supports 125 Juvenile Mentoring Programs (JUMP) in both rural and urban communities, a fourth of which are coordinated by Big Brothers/Big Sisters affiliates. These programs serve different student populations, ranging from first grade through high school, and operate in different settings, including public housing projects, individual schools, and citywide and countywide locations. They draw mentors from many different backgrounds and professions, including law enforcement officers, government employees, businesspeople, doctors and lawyers, teachers, college students, and senior citizens.
"Mentoring is a powerful and relatively simple way to provide adult contacts for youth who are isolated from adults in their homes and communities," notes Simon-McWilliams. "But to be successful, local mentoring programs need a common set of strong elements, including carefully screened volunteers, training for mentoring, procedures for matching mentors to students, and case-managed support and supervision."
To strengthen existing mentoring programs and support new ones, the National Mentoring Center will provide multifaceted training, technical assistance, and resource materials addressing fundamental components of successful programs to juvenile mentoring projects, school staff, community members, and parents. Among the features of NWREL's new center are:
- Strategically selected sites for conducting regional and cluster training sessions based on local project locations
- A national technical assistance network of field-based experts to deliver onsite technical assistance in geographic proximity
- Technology applications-such as listservs, Web sites, toll-free telephone assistance, and teleconferencing-to deliver information, resources, and consultation assistance
- A core training curriculum field-tested by the experienced staff of five successful mentoring host sites strategically located across the country
- Extensive experience and technical capabilities in materials production and dissemination
"School-community mentoring programs can offer students new avenues for exploring educational and career paths, stronger incentives for staying in school, and increased confidence to succeed." "This is a very exciting program. Mentoring has been around literally for centuries, and this program will bring together both new and old ideas," notes Dr. Kay Davis, Director of the National Mentoring Center. "The center will provide information and services at a national level to increase staff and volunteer skills, to improve practices, and to increase the number of volunteers in local mentoring projects."
Davis joined the Laboratory last May as Director of the Community and Education Volunteer Services Center, and prior to that she was Associate Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City.
NWREL also received a two-year, $200,000 grant from the federal Women's Educational Equity Act in October to update and enhance a three-volume set of materials titled Hand-in-Hand: Mentoring Young Women. Originally developed by NWREL in the mid-1980s to train and support career women as effective mentors for high school girls, these materials will be updated, expanded, and available in both English and Spanish versions. Watch future issues of the Northwest Report for more information on the availability of these products.
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