This week I met with our one of our Assistant Principals Andy Carlson. And one of our great student leaders Elliott Tannenbaum. Our mission was to replicate the work of Nathan Frank an assistant principal at a similarly composed high school in Pennsylvania. His school is 5 years into a ninth grade mentor program and they are seeing positive results. Most notably they have increased the number of students earning 5 credits in their first year of high school from 35% to 65%.
Our high school is an excellent high school that regularly places students in Ivy League colleges and has provided an educational base for all of Concord's residents. As Jim Collins says, however, it is important for every good to great organization to confront the brutal facts of their reality. We have an epidemic of 9th grade failure. The number of students failing at least one class during their first year in high school has remained constant at above 20% for years.
The meeting this week was the first official planning meeting to begin our mentor program. Andy reflected on the success of a similar program for all students at his high school where they had big brothers and big sisters. I expressed my hope that this would be a positive experience for both mentors and mentees. I want students to be proud to be part of the program and I want them to have some fun even though much of the work will be hard. Elliott was excited about the possibilities but a little worried about the scope of the program and whether we would be able to pull it all off in time.
We resolved to split up the work.
- Andy said he would work on a plan to communicate with guidance counselors and ask them what students might be good candidates for the mentor role. We all agreed that the students did not need to all be all star students or members of NHS, Key Club, etc. If they wanted to be part of the group and could commit to the commitment then we wanted them.
- Elliott agreed to work on a letter that would go out to students asking them to be part of the group.
- I agreed to work on a plan of expectations for the group members. I also will plan a calendar for the timelines that we need to meet.
In general we have a couple other planning pieces that we are working on. They are:
- Before the end of the school year create a meet and greet for mentors and future 9th grade students.
- Plan a the summer 1/2 day conference for the mentors. This will be on Friday August 12th.
- Plan a month by month theme schedule for the mentors and mentees to focus on.
All three of us are quite excited by the challenges that are ahead of us.
