Education
State mentorship program prepares
for fall of open schools, returning
students, and new challenges
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COURIER LIFE, JULY 30-AUG. 5, 2021 15
BY DEAN JAMIESON
As schools reopen, and
children and teenagers return
to their classrooms, organizations
like New York
State’s Mentorship Program
will likely prove more important
than ever, providing
struggling students with
the academic, social and
emotional support that they
need.
“Mentorship, in all capacities,
will be at the epicenter of
young people navigating the
pandemic and coming out the
other side,” said Diane Urso,
Queens and Long Island director.
“You don’t see the end
result of a crisis until you go
through it.”
For Urso, that end result
could mean many things –
from anxiety to academic
stress to depression. Adolescents
have been forced in
front of their screens, while
young children have missed
well over a year of essential
education.
“People think they know
where these kids are going
to be, but, unfortunately, we
do not,” said Urso. The Mentorship
Program is preparing
for all eventualities, with
added training for the particular
psychological challenges
these students will
face – although Urso emphasized
that these mentors are
not mental health professionals,
and are required to talk to
mentor coordinators if something
they can’t handle comes
up. This has never been more
emphasized than now, with
last year’s added social and
psychological stresses.
The New York Mentorship
Program was fi rst established
by Matilda Cuomo in 1984,
with the aim of preventing
school dropouts through oneand
one mentor relationships.
“Children who succeed despite
overwhelming obstacles
do so often because of a caring
adult in their lives,” reads the
Program’s statement of purpose.
The results have proven
this: mentees are 46% less
likely to start using drugs,
and 52% less likely to skip a
day of school.
Yet these obstacles have
never been more severe. Some
students have been unable,
for lack of technology, to properly
attend online classes, others
have taken advantage to
cheat; all have been trapped
at home, however, and will
fi nd the return to live class a
challenge. “There’s probably
not a student who has not lost
something,” said Urso of the
pandemic and it’s after-effects
on public education.
The Mentorship Program
tailors itself to suit particular
school districts, with some
districts emphasizing adult
mentoring, while others emphasize
peer-to-peer relationships.
In Brentwood School District,
the state’s second largest,
the focus is on peer-topeer
support, with ROTC
and Honors Society students
mentoring elementary-school
kids. While the focus is on academic
performance, mentors
obviously provide social and
emotional support, as well.
“I think it’s going to be
even more important for us
to build the kid’s self-esteem,
their confi dence, their sense
of belonging, community,”
said Ann Palmer, Assistant
Superintendent of the Brentwood
School District. “It has
never been more important
for these kids to have social
and emotional support.”
The Program’s fl exibility
will be an even greater advantage
now, with in-person, online
and hybrid mentoring all
being employed as local mandates
– and case numbers –
require. Even at the height of
the pandemic, the Program
was trying its best to match
students with mentors, sometimes
in person, but mostly
online. “Even then, the connection
was still so valuable,”
said Urso. “We’re talking
about districts where the kids
are just not seeing anybody.”
Even despite these challenges,
both Urso and Palmer
remained hopeful. Mentors
are educators and role models,
but also friends, people that
struggling students know have
their back. For students struggling
with school, or at home,
without sympathetic teachers
or parental fi gures, the results
can be life-changing.
“When you make a bad
choice, it’s like skipping a
rock,” said Urso. “But it’s
the same thing with a good
choice.”