It Takes a Village: Education Majors Mentoring Title I Students in Southeast Louisiana
Format
Poster Presentation
Location
Harborside Center
Strand #1
Academic Achievement & School Leadership
Strand #2
Family & Community
Relevance
The proposal relates to academic achievement, leadership, family, and community because all of these variables were used to hone mentoring within a Title I school.
Brief Program Description
This presentation shares the results of a mentoring program between a predominately White university’s education majors and students at a Title I school. The mentoring program was developed to show that culturally mismatching Title I students with university student as mentors can strengthen the knowledge of the learners, while also, honing information directed towards reading comprehension, building high cognitive vocabulary, and honing essay development.
Summary
The mentoring program describes the vision of education majors and an educationalist to change the pathways of students labeled as “at-risk”. The constituents of the partnership are education majors from a local predominately White university who are determined to counteract the belief that children must be culturally matched (mentor/mentee) for educational impact to be made. The junior high students are predominately African American. They are also residents of public housing, primarily from female-headed households, and typically at least one school year behind their age mates. There are many who believe that this neighborhood school can survive the dismal picture despite its failing School Performance Score (SPS) which schools receive each year. Schools that have an SPS below 65 for the 2010-2011 school years receive an F. the junior high school’s SPS is 68.9%.
From a qualitative approach, the mentoring program considered a wide range of conditions that can be important in mentoring relationships (Rhodes, 2002, 2005; Keller, 2005; Sipe, 2005; Spencer & Rhodes, 2005). These include, but are not limited to, (1) attributes that the mentor and mentee each took to the relationship such as the mentor’s skills and confidence and the student’s belief that the mentoring can increase reading functioning; (2) characteristics of the relationship, such as the extent to which mentor and youth formed an emotional bond characterized by feelings of trust, empathy, and a respect for one another despite their cultural differences.(3) themes emerging that were ascertained from the reflections of both the university student that the mentee. (4) Questionnaires completed by youth and, in some instances, also by mentors that provided information about the success of the program.
Evidence
Many variables were used to measure the success of the program. The variables include: the ability of the program participation numbers to remain constant, improvement of test scores, involvement of parents, data from both pretest and post test results of mentees and mentors, journal reflections from the mentors and mentees, and negligible reports of dropout incidents during the given time period.
Furthermore, the positive implications of this research are supported by
Bloom, D. (2010). Programs and policies to assist high school dropouts
in the transition to adulthood. The Future of Children, 20, 89–108
Rhodes, J. E. (2005). A model of youth mentoring. In D. L. DuBois &
M. J. Karcher (Eds.), Handbook of youth mentoring (pp. 30–43).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schochet, P. Z., McConnell, S., & Burghardt, J. (2003). National Job
Corps Study: Findings Using Administrative Earnings Records
Data. Final Report. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research
Swanson, C. B. (2008). Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic Report on
High School Graduation. Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in
Education.
Biographical Sketch
CELINA ECHOLS is a professor in Southeastern Louisiana University, College of Education, Department of Teaching and Learning. Echols’ research, presentations, and publications address social equity, diversity, and educational psychology. Although Echols has worked at Southeastern for the past sixteen years, she is a native Mississippian who attended Jackson State University, the University of Southern Mississippi, Wesley Theological Seminary and the University of Akron.
Keyword Descriptors
atrisk, mentoring, tutoring, efficacy, academic achievement, multiculturalism
Presentation Year
2016
Start Date
3-8-2016 4:00 PM
End Date
3-8-2016 5:30 PM
Recommended Citation
Echols, Celina V. and Beckers, Gerlinde G., "It Takes a Village: Education Majors Mentoring Title I Students in Southeast Louisiana" (2016). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 54.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2016/2016/54
It Takes a Village: Education Majors Mentoring Title I Students in Southeast Louisiana
Harborside Center
This presentation shares the results of a mentoring program between a predominately White university’s education majors and students at a Title I school. The mentoring program was developed to show that culturally mismatching Title I students with university student as mentors can strengthen the knowledge of the learners, while also, honing information directed towards reading comprehension, building high cognitive vocabulary, and honing essay development.
