District Administration - February 2007 - (Page 56)

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Students are mentored Monday through Friday with a different mentor every day of the week. Members of the Wayne Township district’s own staff—from custodians to accountants to Superintendent Terry Thompson—have also taken on mentoring. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself,” Thompson explains. Ever y Monday, Thompson spends a half hour each with two secondg raders. In the ﬁ rst 10 minutes, he works with them on books they are reading. Then they spend 10 minutes on vocabulary. The ﬁ nal 10 minutes are spent on “some type of educational activity, like synonyms, preﬁ xes and sufﬁ xes, but in a game format. They love it,” Thompson says. Two of Thompson’s administrative Mentor ing is “hard work but it’s as rewarding as all get-out.” —Terry Thompson, superintendent of schools, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Indianapolis, Ind. assistants do the same with the same students Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and others follow on Thursdays and Fridays to provide consistency as students work through their reading lessons. “We have seen signiﬁcant growth in student achievement,” Thompson says. The 2005-2006 year-end test results conﬁ rmed that 142 secondg raders had advanced at least two instructional reading levels, compa red to 90 students the year before. “It’s hard work but it’s as rewarding as all get-out,” Thompson exclaims. If the mentors had been paid it would have been worth about $534,561, ofﬁcials say. Instead, the district gives them tickets to school basketball games, chili suppers and other events to show appreciation. While the mentors are not compensated, school districts pay for the mentoring programs they use. Gibbons says costs for HOSTS programs range from $30,000 to $50,000 per school in the ﬁrst year of the program, from $10,000 to $15,000 in the second year, and from $7,000 to $10,000 in the third year and beyond. HOSTS Learning Lures Older Students to Help In Pasadena, where 1,100 students in grades K-5 were mentored last year, intermediate and high school students, not just those in advanced academic classes, have joined commu n it y volunteers. “It’s been a win-win situation for both sets of kids,” says Ginger Lay, the district’s HOSTS volunteer coordinator. “It gives them [the older students] good self-esteem” to help struggling readers, she says. A ltoget her, 2,811 Pasadena mentors contributed 28,473 hours in 2005-2006 representing a value of $513,652.92. Their commitment paid off in test results: 86 percent of the program’s students passed their regular reading class with an average grade of 78. In Brewster, about 120 residents, out of a total of 2,500, mentor 60 students, mostly in third and fourth grades, in Brewster Element a r y School. Mentoring takes place throughout the day, starting before regular school hours and continui ng after school, in a special HOSTS room that is attractively decorated with a patriotic theme, says Principal Eric Driessen. This year, the theme is “HOSTS Wants You,” playing off the World War II U.S. military recruiting theme of “Uncle Sam Wants You,” Driessen says. “It is a positive place and the kids absolutely love it,” he says. “They know why they are there—to get Ensuring Mentors Have the Right Stuff Although many community residents might volunteer to be mentors, it is important to check them out before taking them on for training, says Susan G. Weinberger, president of Mentor Consulting Group of Norwalk, Conn., a school mentoring group. They should be “caring, patient, good listeners, have a sense of humor and like kids,” she says. Every mentor also should be interviewed personally and go through a screening process that checks their employment history and conﬁrms that they have no criminal record, Weinberger adds. She usually asks mentors to volunteer one hour a week for a year. “You usually can’t ask them in the beginning to be involved for more than that. It will scare the living daylights out of them,” she says, because they might think they are taking on more than they can handle. But at the end of the year, “if the program and school system have done it right, you can applaud them and ask them to stay for another year,” Weinberger says. 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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - February 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
Tackling Health Care Together
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Curriculum Hotspots
New Information Systems Track Student Progress
Students Wanted!
Spread the Word
Mentors Boost Student Reading Levels
The Online Edge
Speaking Out
Research Corner
Problem/Solution
Leadership Books
New Products
Calendar of Events
Professional Opinion

District Administration - February 2007