When freshmen returned to Live Oak High this year, the school
was ready and waiting for them, along with sophomores who were in
the middle schools for their 9th grade year and a special program
is in place to guide them through the year.
When freshmen returned to Live Oak High this year, the school was ready and waiting for them, along with sophomores who were in the middle schools for their 9th grade year and a special program is in place to guide them through the year.
“It’s like a big brother/big sister set-up,” Associated Student Body (ASB) Director Norm Dow said Monday. “We have a whole bunch of people that are mentors, and they are assigned a group of freshman. They meet individually with the freshman once or twice a month, answering any questions they might have. They’ll be doing different things each month, too, based on certain themes.”
This is the first year LIve Oak has tried anything like this, Dow said. The ASB usually organizes an orientation for incoming 10th graders; this year, they had two groups of students new to high school to worry about.
The mentoring program comes from a company called Ignite, headquartered in Phoenix. The program costs $20 per student.
Regina Reilly, a leadership coach with Ignite who is working with Live Oak, said the cost of the program varies by school depending on numbers of students and what kind of program is designed for the school. Live Oak Principal Nick Boden said he believes the program will be just what the doctor ordered for the school as it adjusts to its new student body.
“I like the fact that it doesn’t just stop at orientation,” Boden said of the program. “We had a really great orientation, had a great time with the students. But the student mentors will continue to meet with their freshmen and be available to them throughout the year. There may be some times during the year when the freshmen need their mentors more than others, but they’ll still have monthly meetings.”
Reilly said the program at Live Oak is structured so that, of the 70 student mentors, there is a core of 12 “executive mentors.”
“Those are the students who are the primary drivers of the program,” she said. “They are responsible for designing the program and working with me and a lead coordinator, Mr. Dow.”
The student mentors are required to meet with their five freshmen formally once a month. Each month will have a theme, such as bullying or gossip, and the mentors will have training from Reilly about specific activities for these formal meetings. The activities are designed to give students space to open up about their feelings, Reilly said, and to ask questions.
The mentors and their freshmen can have “informal meetings” at any time, she said, which could be as simple as a freshman running into his or her mentor during brunch or lunch and asking how they can buy a yearbook or sign up for an activity.
Or, she said, it might be a more serious question, such as how to break up with a girlfriend/ boyfriend, or how to handle an uncomfortable situation.
“We will give the mentors training and tools to use,” she said. “Our greatest untapped resource in our high schools is the students themselves. By harnessing the goodwill and best intentions of the students, we can help the students, the teachers and counselors.”
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at md****@mo*************.com or by phone at (408) 779-4106 ext. 202. Cheeto Barrera is an intern at the Morgan Hill Times, he can be reached at cb******@mo*************.com
