To Mentor or Not to Mentor?

Spring (or the threat of it) is that time of year when La Salle begins to prepare for the annual Mission Effectiveness Workshop conducted by the Board of Trustees and the Board of Regents. A committee of the Regents uses the academic year to collect data regarding the four principles articulated in the School’s Mission Statement (you can find our Mission Statement by clicking on “About Us” on the School’s Web Site). One of the ways in which the Committee collects data is by surveying a sample of the student body who are asked to respond to a series of questions designed to ascertain their perspective on the relative success of the strategies the School uses to implement the Mission on a daily basis. One such strategy has been the creation of a twice-weekly “Mentoring Program” in which teachers and most administrators meet with a group of 16 students for about 30 minutes. A committee of administrators and faculty has created a grade-specific curriculum to address the various issues arising over the course of four years in which our teenagers grapple with changes in their physical, intellectual and emotional development. The fall semester, for example, finds the seniors spending a significant amount of their Mentoring periods focused on the task of applying to and selecting an appropriate college. Freshmen, on the other hand, are introduced to the highly structured world called high school and are given strategies to negotiate the - often bewildering - maze of emotional, intellectual and social issues into which they are thrust on a daily basis.

It shouldn’t surprise any adult actively engaged in negotiating the peaks and valleys of adolescent life (parents/teachers) that the older the teenager, the more critical they are of the value of the Mentoring program. Seniors, therefore, could be expected to be more annoyed with the sudden disruption in their schedule that Mentoring imposed on them. Pat Bonacci, AFSC delightfully captured their irritation with this observation:

Of course they’re annoyed…we took away 10 minutes of their lunch-time and added 10 minutes to their school-day!

While senior angst is a situation worthy of attention, what was troubling to the committee was the discovery, based on last year’s survey of students (which coincided with the implementation of the first year of the Mentoring program), that there was a significant lack of clarity across grade levels as to the purpose of Mentoring. As a result, the committee included a “free-response” question in the 2011 survey which led with the prompt:

The purpose of Mentoring is….

Student response to this question mirrored my earlier assertion about the inverse relationship between the age of adolescents and their relative comfort with change. Here are a couple of freshman responses:


to help the students get started at La Salle and to have someone to go to if there is some sort of problem

to have someone to talk to about things that happen in school and to help you with questions about school. It is also used to help you to become a better person and have strong morals

These comments – which echo the statement of purpose in the Mentor curriculum – highlight the ongoing renewal experienced by every high school with the arrival of a new freshman class. Not knowing what the school was like before their arrival, freshmen take at face value the program they experience in their first year. They are too new – and young – to question the decisions of teachers and administrators.

Not so for seniors who have had three years of twists and turns in their academic journey to inform them of what’s wrong with high school. Some of their cynicism is a function of their desire to occupy the privileged position that being a high school senior represents. When they finally get there, they tend to be uninterested in any change which impacts their anticipated enjoyment that being at the “top of the heap” represents. The introduction of Mentoring in their senior year is an example of a change that impacts their anticipated privileged status. To no one’s surprise, the following responses typify their reaction to Mentoring:

to make the school day longer and to sound fancy to incoming freshman

to fill in a forty minute time lapse so it looks like we're at school for a longer amount of time

The latter comment echoes Pat Bonacci’s lighthearted interpretation of the seniors take on Mentoring. To be fair, some seniors were willing to look at the big picture:

to give students an open forum to discuss important facets of our academic and outside life.

Parents know first-hand how their teenagers can resist change which is intended for their benefit. It is no different in schools. I’ve often commented in this space and elsewhere that La Salle’s success is a product of the close working relationship between home and school. And, just as parents have to wait until their children reach adulthood to receive significant appreciation for their good parenting, it is just as true at school. So, while we know that four years from now Mentoring will be an accepted fact of life at La Salle; today’s freshmen will become tomorrow’s seniors, with their own set of critiques…and the cycle begins anew – just like springtime.