After four years of implementation, staff at Mahomet-Seymour High School have witnessed the positive effects of the Freshmen Mentor Program (FMP).
FMP meets during a daily, half-hour advisory period where students receive specialized instruction alongside study hall time. All freshmen are required to participate in FMP, which is led by 55 selected junior and senior students.
“We were trying to be purposeful and intentional about injecting a higher sense of community into the school because we may not be diverse in some ways, but we are very economically diverse,” Sponsor Dan Ryan said. “There is stratification in our student body that we wanted to address. And there is the whole socio-emotional side of school that probably doesn’t get addressed bell-to-bell.”
Principal Shannon Cheek said the program helps incoming freshmen bridge the gap between junior high and high school while also providing leadership opportunities for upperclassmen.
“We were looking for a way that we could get our eighth graders connected to the high school,” he said. “We felt like the best way to do that is through their peers. The Freshmen Mentor Program has really changed the culture of the building.”
During the spring months, sophomores and juniors apply to FMP with two teacher recommendations. Based on staff assessments of the students, 12 to 15 boys and girls from the two classes are selected to run 10 mentor classes the following year. Each FMP class has five to seven mentors with 25 freshmen.
Incoming juniors and seniors spend the summer with FMP Sponsors Dan Ryan and Lisa Martin to come up with an agenda for the following year. Two days a week, mentors help freshmen focus on their academics during advisory. The other two days are spent talking about social issues, and one day a week the mentors lead their group in a fun activity.
“During the school year their goal is to focus on the relationship building,” Ryan said.
Martin and Ryan said they have seen freshmen grades and scores improve over the four years FMP has been in place. FMP supporting teachers check student grades once every two weeks, while upperclassmen are encouraged to engage in academic conversations with freshmen each week. Cheek said he has seen disciplinary issues diminish over the four years.
The program has also changed the social landscape of MSHS. It is not uncommon to see freshmen and senior engaging in daily conversation or for the groups to go out to a movie, bowling or to play paintball after school hours.
“That’s just part of our culture now,” Ryan said. “You almost have to do a double take because it’s just part of our structure.”
With competitions between FMP classrooms during Spirit Week, participation in the daily events has also increased over the years.
“Before this mentor program, we had some participation, but the program has built a sense of community and school spirit,” Cheek said. “Now in it’s fourth year, that’s just the way things are here. It may not be cool to participate as a junior or a senior, but through this program, it became part of our culture.”
While the FMP program seeks to bridge the gap between the freshmen and senior classes, staff has also seen students gain a broader perspective of their classmates through the social discussion which happen in both controlled and natural settings.
“It gives them a different outlook on who those classmates are, and what they really care about,” Cheek said.
“Our mentors are getting as much, if not more out of this program as the freshmen,” Ryan said. “A lot of these kids’ eyes are opened to different sectors of the community they didn’t know about. They gain an appreciation for that really quickly.”
Both Martin and Ryan have watched junior and seniors keep in contact with their mentors even after they graduate from MSHS. Former students are also interested in finding out about their freshmen as they become juniors and seniors.
“The kids genuinely care,” Martin said. “They want to see the program get better.”
Ryan said he hopes as the program continues to improve, upperclassmen will naturally reach out and invest in the freshmen around them.
“There are divisive walls between the student bodies,” he said. “There are cliques just like any school. Who knows what great lifelong friend you might walk by in your four years here because you grew up in a different place or took different classes? Hopefully we’ve created an environment that bridges those gaps.”
“A sense of community is a universal need we all have,” he added.
Seniors not in the Freshmen Mentor Program attend a 30-minute study hall. The school has also brought in business leaders or recent grads to talk about their experiences after graduation.
Sophomores attend a targeted academic study hall during advisory period, while juniors prepare for the ACT exam until April. Juniors in FMP attend ACT prep on Mondays and Fridays, then take their practice exam on Wednesday mornings before school.
