Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009
Photo credit: Krystin Norman.
A Walla Walla girl, a kindergartner, would have none of it – wouldn’t sit down anywhere near, wouldn’t get close to the Whitman College student who was to be her weekly mentor.
But gradually she started opening up. And then came that moment her mentor, Hanna Ory ’11, will always remember.
“We were walking hand-in-hand to recess and she said to me, ‘I really like you… Don’t ever go away,’” Ory related.
Ory isn’t the only Whitman College student to have experiences like that. About 175 Whitman students leave campus once a week to be mentors at Walla Walla’s seven elementary schools and Pioneer Middle School. They are paired up with students that school officials think would benefit from the experience.
The mentoring program, run by college students, started 15 years ago as a senior thesis with 20 matched pairs, and has grown to about 175 pairs and includes all of the city’s elementary schools now, with the addition this year of Blue Ridge.
Whitman students spend an hour a week, usually at lunchtime. The mentor sessions are non-academic in nature; mentors spend the time eating with their mentee, chatting, playing games or doing outdoor recess activities.
But once a year, the children do the traveling, coming to Whitman College campus for the Mentees to Campus Day to participate at a Reid Campus Carnival. The event gives the pairs time to have fun together, bond more and give the children a chance to be on a college campus, many of whom had never experienced that. More than 150 children and mentors participated in the 2009 edition, held Feb. 20.
A couple of school counselors told organizers the carnival was the highlight of the children’s school year.
Jacque Richerzhagen, an intervention specialist at Edison Elementary School, said the Whitman student mentors are extremely important.
“It’s a bonding the students need to have,” she said.
Richerzhagen said many of the students come from difficult situations and they look forward to being with their mentor every week. “It’s a wonderful connection.”
David Tegtmeier, a school counselor at Pioneer Middle School, related the initial frustration a Whitman student mentor had because she couldn’t connect with her mentee. The mentee would walk away from her, wouldn’t engage. But Tegtmeier encouraged the mentor to hang in there, gave suggestions, and the mentor eventually was able to break through the barriers and have a positive relationship. Tegtmeier said the mentee’s behavior has improved considerably and Tegtmeier attributes at least some of that to the relationship with her mentor.
Tegtmeier said having the Whitman students as a resource means Pioneer Middle School has another way to introduce kids to the importance of post-high-school education – by actually having college students to talk to about how they got into college and how they planned for college and life. And there’s the important aspect of just giving them the company of a caring adult.
“Research shows consistently that for kids to go on and have success in education they need to have a strong connection with a caring adult,” he said.
Brian Mooers’s mentee said at the carnival that Mooers has taught him responsibility and ways to solve problems.
Mooers ’10 can add up the benefits for himself, too. He said being a mentor gives him a break from the stress of college work and life on campus.
And it’s great to know there is “someone always looking forward to being with you,” he said.
