Mentoring Program Aims to Improve Equity

BROOKLINE - A fall dinner for seven fourth-graders, their families and new “mentors” kicked off the innovative Pipeline to Success program at Pierce School. The project, funded by the Brookline Education Foundation, is based on three years of research, an anti-racism seminar for the entire faculty and an ongoing, in-depth training program for the mentors. The project was developed and is led by school psychologist Carol Sepkoski, guidance counselor Gayle Van Hatten and teacher Nancy Springer, who answer questions about the program below.

How did your group come together, and how do you work as a leadership team for the project?

We came together through the Pierce Equity Team four years ago. The Equity Team developed a three-pronged approach to promote high academic achievement for African-American and Latino students: mentoring; courageous conversations about race among staff and parents; and after-school programs. We pursued mentoring, attended a mentoring workshop and reviewed the literature.

Based on this long period of focused study, we decided to start a mentoring program in fourth grade. We decided to “start small,” so we could manage the project effectively. Empowering Multicultural Initiatives led the kick-off workshop, building on the work several of our staff had done with EMI previously. The seven mentors and three coordinators meet with an EMI consultant twice a month for ongoing training and support.

This project involves training for the entire staff, while mentoring is limited to seven students. Can you expand a bit on the thinking that went into this approach?

This is a school where everyone is invested in equity, so we started with a training that included everyone. What does an anti-racist school look like? We wanted everyone to use the same language. We wanted to start small so that we could manage the pilot group well and grow the program by adding a new group of students and mentors each year. Thus, it was important that the whole staff be involved from the start.

Nineteen teachers volunteered to be mentors. This is a phenomenal response and truly speaks to the commitment of the Pierce faculty. How did you get so many teachers to volunteer?

We just sent out an e-mail and within a day, 19 teachers had volunteered! This reflects the culture of the Pierce School and its commitment to equity, which is fostered by our principal, Pipier Smith-Mumford.

Why do you feel fourth grade is the optimal grade to undertake such an intervention?

The research shows that an achievement gap widens around this time and that connections between children and adults in the schools are important to ensure optimal success before children reach the middle school years.

You planned group events for students and parents and other work with the students and their mentors. How has this shaped up?

Mentors commit to meeting with their students once a week and to participating in four activities with the whole group during the school year. Everyone attended the kick-off dinner and parents and other family members came to applaud the venture. A trip to Northeastern University’s African-American Institute is planned for March. Students and their mentors will be given a tour of the campus, meet with the president of the African-American Institute and attend a concert. A trip to the [New England] Aquarium is planned for the spring, and a second dinner with families will be held in June. In addition, mentors pursue a range of relationship-building activities with the students, such as basketball, board games or eating lunch together. This is not a tutorial, but the mentors stay in contact with classroom teachers and talk about schoolwork. They also stay in touch with parents.

How do you plan to further develop the program next year?

Next year, there will be 14 African-American and Latino children in fourth grade, so we will be tripling the size of the program. We will fine-tune the guidebook for mentors that we developed this year and we will continue to do research to evaluate the success of the program.

What aspect of the support you received from the Brookline Education Foundation was most critical to you?

We could not have done this project as well without the foundation. One critical aspect of the program is the consultant who meets with the group of mentors twice a month, which the foundation funded. The grant also supported some of the larger projects we do with the students.