At Rhodes, mentors are advocates for their mentees. Each Rhodes student has an adult mentor on campus who dedicates time each week to discuss their progress and goals. According to the National Mentoring Partnership, when students know that they are cared for by an adult on campus, they are 52% less likely to skip school and 55% more likely to go to college. Additionally, mentoring better prepares students for post-secondary success in ways that no standardized test could.
Using Summit Learning enables us to keep the Mesa Public Schools promise that “we will know each student by name and serve them by strength.” I’ve been a public educator for over thirteen years, and it is only now, working at an institution that embodies the values of individualized care, concern and instruction, that I’ve found my school family. As a veteran educator, I will never again teach at a school without dedicated mentoring time for students.
And just last month, I learned about a math teacher who noticed his mentee was having a bad day, so he talked with her and learned that the rain had ruined her notebook on her walk to school. He was able to give her all new school supplies and made her day.