The Role of Mentoring in the ‘Middle School to High School Transition’

Author: Meha Davé, Director of Program Innovation for Spark

Middle school, as most teachers and parents (and almost anyone!) would agree, can be a difficult time for most students. The brain is in a constant state of development, which makes social, personal and academic transitions challenging. Studies show that grappling with these challenges during this critical time can lead to disengagement and school drop-out during the transition to high school. Consider these statistics:

• Between 60-70% of US students become chronically disengaged from school during 7th or 8th grade[1] 
• 68% of students who drop out of school do so in 9^th grade, or after repeating 9^th grade[2]

Maybe most importantly, the biggest predictor of on-time graduation is if a student is on track during his or her freshman year in high school. These findings underscore what we believe at Spark: supporting underserved students in the middle grades is crucial to bolstering engagement, success and increasing graduation rates.

I recently had the chance to explain how Spark’s mentoring model is doing just this at the

National Mentoring Summit, an incredible opportunity to connect with mentoring colleagues and share best practices! It was founded and convened by MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, and is the signature event for the mentoring field that brings together approximately 1,000 top researchers, policy makers, practitioners, the network of affiliate Mentoring Partnerships, corporate partners and many other national youth-serving organizations. 

Held in Washington, D.C., the theme of this conference was “Connection, Growth, and Opportunity,” and I was proud to demonstrate Spark’s commitment to these qualities. Through one-to-one mentorships, which pair underserved students with industry professionals, Spark provides a personal connection with a mentor, a tailor-made space for personal and professional growth for students and mentors, and most importantly an opportunity for engagement in an area of personal interest which may have previously seemed out of reach.

Take Andrew for example, a current high school senior, who participated in Spark in

seventh grade. Andrew expressed an interest in drawing, and was paired with a Spark mentor at a Los Angeles architectural firm. Andrew honed his professional and artistic skills in a real-world apprenticeship and felt more prepared for high school as a result. He was just accepted early admission to Brown University and hopes to become an architect. Andrew’s 10-week apprenticeship gave him skills and confidence to better transition from middle school to high school, and his connection with his mentor endures to this day.

Through short and long-term evaluation of Spark participants, we see that Spark students develop the academic mindsets, social emotional and academic skills that lead to improvements in their school performance. We’ve seen that more than 70% of our students have improved their performance in school.

Here are some key factors we attribute to our success, and suggestions for other mentoring programs serving students in the middle grades:

•  Listen to the mentee to gain an understanding of how to tailor their mentorship experience
• Apply mentee areas of interest to project-based, hands-on learning
• Educate mentors about the “middle school mind” and successful strategies for working with this age group 
• Structure mentor and mentee meetings around skill-building activities
• Use the present to explore the future, including youth aspirations around future education and career goals 

Join Spark as we continue to make progress for middle school students and mentors. To become involved as a mentor or supporter, apply here.

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[1] Source: Everyone Graduates Center

[2] www.sparkprogram.org

Mentoring ‘In Real Life’

Four Ways to Celebrate Mentoring and Make an Impact in 2016

For many of us, January symbolizes a fresh start.  It’s about goal setting and looking forward to all of the moments that will make 2016 memorable. Here at Spark, January marks the beginning of the second program session we kick-off each year, pairing students with mentors for 10 weeks of hands-on learning apprenticeships in exciting workplaces..  

It’s fitting then, both personally and professionally, that January is National Mentoring Month.

For Spark staff beginning the second half of our program year, National Mentoring Month is a reminder that our work is part of a larger educational and social movement.  The Mentoring Effect report tells us that one in three young people feel isolated from meaningful connections with adults outside their home.  There’s a clear need for mentoring and Spark is part of the larger network of organizations working to address this national challenge, helping students build the social capital they need to be successful. This program year, Spark is partnering with 30 schools and more than 200 companies and organizations across four major metropolitan regions and engaging more than two thousand volunteer mentors to serve more than 1,000 middle school students, helping them stay engaged, on track and ready for success in high school and beyond.

National Mentoring Month offers simple ways for all of us to make an individual impact in 2016 through mentoring.  I personally hope you take advantage of this opportunity in January to become a volunteer mentor with Spark.  We need more than 1,000 adults to pair one-to-one with students this spring.  But National Mentoring Month is not just about Spark.  It is an opportunity to celebrate and honor the importance of quality mentoring and highlight the impact that mentoring programs like Spark has on adolescents.

In 2015, week-in and week-out I saw the benefits of mentoring unfolding in real life, in offices across the country.  I watched C-level executives block two hours of time each week to share their professional perspective and guide local students.  "Spark makes it so easy,” said Perry Wallack, CFO of Cornerstone OnDemand and a Spark mentor. “Twenty hours is a really small amount of time to play a part in helping a student graduate from high school by motivating them through exposure to world opportunities. We are giving them an essential tool to being successful in life."

I heard from educators who witness positive growth in their students because of Spark mentors. "We've seen their grades improve, we've seen them become more outgoing, but the most important part for us is that we are providing our students with the opportunity to engage in learning experiences outside the confines of their own communities,” shared Sean Holiday, Principal of a Spark partner school.

I watched mentors at Deloitte and CEB and Sony PlayStation take time out of their busy workdays to tap into students’ interests and motivations, engage them in exciting projects with real-world applications and to teach them success skills. I saw students create marketing campaigns for their own fashion lines, and detailed plans for new sporting venues, and concepts for new video games. More than this, I saw students with their own desires ignited and caring adults who believed in them.

Throughout January, organizations, policy makers, mentors and mentees will celebrate the powerful impact of quality mentoring programs across the country. I encourage you to add your voice to the celebration by supporting the mentoring efforts and the volunteer mentors in your community.

Here are four ways you can make 2016 better for a young person and for yourself!

1. Volunteer with Spark and dedicate two hours/week for 10 weeks to a local 7^th or 8^th grader
2. Share your mentoring story on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #MentorIRL (Mentor In Real Life)
3. Change your Facebook or Twitter profile image to reflect your support for Spark and mentoring
4. Invest in mentoring with a donation to Spark

Thank you for bringing mentoring to life.

PS: Tremendous thanks to our friends at MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for making National Mentoring Month a priority since 2002!

Celebrating 10 years of apprenticeships and planning for many more

Throughout my time with Spark - first as a supporter and donor, and now as CEO and a

former mentor - it has been a truly amazing experience to watch Spark grow. Since its establishment in 2004 and its first program launch in 2005, Spark has demonstrated a trend of progress and growth to reach more students, engage more mentors and partner with more schools and companies nationwide. 

We began with a partnership with one school; we paired 11 students with mentors in Redwood City, CA. Today, we are partnered with nearly 30 schools. We are serving more than 1,000 students this year – our largest annual student cohort ever – which means we will have reached more than 4,500 students cumulatively by the end of our tenth year.

This service is only possible with the support of donors and funders who believe in Spark’s impact and value.  In 2005, Spark received its first gift of $10,000 from the Peninsula Community Foundation (now known as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation). In 2008, the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation provided us with $300,000 to engage in our early development phase. And from 2007 to today, the Peery Foundation, Spark’s largest historical funder, provided $750,000, which was fundamental to our replicating across four major metropolitan regions.

To date, Spark has exceeded $3.5 million in funds raised from many great individual, foundation and corporate supporters. That momentum has lead to Spark most recently being awarded a slate of new and big funding commitments over the last 18 months from notable national funders, including $1.2 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to support the development and launch of our alumni programming that supports our students transition into high school; $650,000 from the Brin-Wojcicki Foundation for capacity-building, strategic planning and local program implementation; $240,000 from the All Points North Foundation for public policy work and our Spark Online Institute for teachers; and $100,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation for general operating support.

In just 10 years, we have not only grown, we have improved by tailoring our program to the needs of students and educators in the middle grades, as well as mentors. The institution of “Spark Skills” like teamwork, time management and goal setting helps students build capacities for success.  The development of Spark Online provides on-demand resources and training to mentors and educators. Data-sharing partnerships with school districts mean we can accurately measure our short- and long-term impact. Yet, I believe we have barely scratched the surface of what Spark can do for the thousands of students who can benefit from caring mentors, workplace apprenticeships and targeted skill-building.

This is only the beginning. While we expand our reach to record-setting numbers, this year we are also embarking on our next organizational strategic plan, mapping growth along with quality and sustainability. We imagine a time when mentoring and career exposure are part of the middle school experience for all students - so that young adults like Jonathan continue to feel that they get a, “head start in life.” And working professionals like Bruce continue to have the opportunity to give back during the workday and report that mentoring with Spark is, “one of the most enjoyable projects I've done in recent memory.”

Though these ideas are inspiring and motivating, we remember now - after 10 years of pairing students with mentors in engaging apprenticeships - that the work spearheaded by Spark’s talented staff everyday is all about helping today’s youth prepare for successful futures. 

Thank you for your support, and I’ll be eager for us together to continue this journey with Spark!

The apprenticeship approach: tailor-made for young adolescents

I had the chance to participate in Opportunity Nation’s Opportunity Summit in Washington DC. The annual event convenes a great number of organizations, including Spark, partnering to provide pathways to education, employment and ultimately prosperity for what are called “opportunity youth.” These are young people aged 16-25 who have dropped out of school or have graduated but have not attained post-secondary training or a degree and are therefore unable to obtain meaningful and steady employment.

There are more than six million opportunity youth currently in this country. It is estimated that the macroeconomic costs of all opportunity youth total more than $6 trillion over their collective lifetimes (a million dollars each), as they draw more from society than they are able to contribute to it.

Spark is engaged in this movement even though our students are younger than those addressed by most others within the Opportunity Nation coalition. Our role, of course, is in identifying young people who are showing early warning signs that they may migrate into this category. Participating in Spark keeps them engaged, on track and ready to graduate high school on time and be successful beyond.

Interestingly, our approach with 13 and 14 year-olds in the middle grades is nicely aligned with many of the strategies employed for older youth. One method that has gained momentum in recent years is the apprenticeship.

There are thousands of registered apprenticeships, cataloged and designated by the Department of Labor. They run the gamut from “traditional” trades like plumbing, utility work and carpentry to new occupations generated by the computer and information age, such as computer technicians and network administrators. Importantly, earning an apprenticeship certificate is portable. They are recognized across states, just as post secondary degrees are. There’s legislative work underway to support these types of apprenticeships. Senator Cory Booker and Senator Tim Scott introduced The Leveraging and EnergizingAmerica’s Apprenticeship Programs or “LEAP” Act to increase apprenticeships through a new federal tax credit for employers. 

Spark calls its project-based learning experiences with engaging mentors in exciting workplaces “apprenticeships.” While these opportunities are not officially registered apprenticeships designed to connect people directly to specific careers, they nevertheless embody the spirit of the apprenticeship approach for younger students. The experience is hands-on, experiential, embedded within the workplace, and guided by an expert mentor.

Our belief is that Spark’s apprenticeship approach is uniquely suited for young adolescents. The middle grades are notoriously challenging for youth. This is the period when students begin to really disengage. Gallup conducts an annual poll of students – some half a million in the sample each year – that measures, as they categorize it, their hope, wellbeing and engagement. Hope and wellbeing actually remain reasonably steady from fifth grade to twelfth grade. Meanwhile, engagement drops. And two-thirds of that drop occurs in the middle grades – sixth, seventh and eighth. Other studies have shown that by the time students reach high school, as much as 60% are “chronically disengaged.”

My sense is this disengagement is driven by a mismatch between the teaching and learning approach in school in these years – which still remains largely didactic in a majority of schools – and what students need in this developmental period. Young adolescents are in an intensified period of identity formation, yet schools rarely tap into their self-interests. They respond most to relationship-based experiences, but their bonds are limited to their teachers and peers, therefore they lack broader social capital. And, they are beginning to think more about their futures, yet they are not offered enough opportunities to explore their options at this stage.

When the organization Get Schooled surveyed students who were chronic absentees, the youth cited their reasons for disengaging: school is “boring” and they didn’t like the subjects. They also indicated what would get them more interested: hands-on activities and a better connection between what there are doing in school and their futures.

Apprenticeships address these needs directly. Obviously, middle grades students are not old enough to engage in registered apprenticeships. But, the apprenticeship approach is uniquely suited to tapping into students’ self-interests, offering a broader set of positive relationships, and examining future professional options. Furthermore, apprenticeships do satisfy young people’s craving for hands-on learning experiences and the connection between education with future careers and the paths to get there.

At Spark, we’d like to see a workplace-based, hands-on learning project become a standard educational experience in the middle grades. It’s the type of opportunity that can get youth fired up about learning, keeping them engaged, on track and ready at a critical inflection point. That’s good for education. It’s good for workforce development. It’s good for young people.