Program Goals/ Target Population
The Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program is a structured cross-age peer mentoring program in which high school students provide one-on-one mentoring to elementary and middle school students, either after school or on weekends, at the mentees’ schools throughout the school year. The program is designed to serve a mix of children who are both identified and not identified as at risk for social problems and academic disengagement. The program also is indicated for children attending schools in districts with high rates of high school dropout, which puts them at greater risk for school failure and dropout. The goals of the program are to promote mentees’ connectedness (to school, parents, and the future) and improve academic achievement by experiencing a supportive relationship with an older peer at school and practicing perspective taking, social skills, and school engagement.
Program Components
The Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program is a year-round program with a structured curriculum in which high school mentors and elementary to middle school mentees engage with one another within a larger group context. It includes instructions for match (mentor–mentee) and group projects to practice perspective taking and social skills, and to engage in social connectedness activities (such as the two described in the next paragraph). Using a mentor manual, mentors are introduced to one of 36 activities in the curriculum before each meeting with their mentees. Although the pairs work one-on-one during most of the meetings, they also meet with other pairs in a group format during each meeting. Group interactions allow mentor–mentee pairs to participate in small group settings that meet some of their needs for peer engagement.
Two curriculum-based, connectedness promotion components, which are implemented during the first 6 months of the program, are teacher interviews and role-playing stories after reading moral dilemma books. In module 3, the mentee plans a teacher interview, rehearses it with his or her mentor, conducts it with a teacher, discusses the interview with his or her mentor, and then develops a poster and story about the teacher and presents it to peers. The goal of this activity is for the mentees to become more familiar and comfortable with (i.e., connected to) their teachers. In module 5, the connectedness-to-reading activities build on stories in eight brief children’s books. Mentor–mentee pairs read the books together and then role-play alternative outcome scenarios in a peer group format.
Another primary component of the program is family engagement, through quarterly recreational events called SuperSaturdays. For these events, parents of mentees are invited to spend time with their children’s mentors, see the work their children have done, and participate in activities (such as fieldtrips, picnics, and mock carnivals) with their children and their mentors. Parents are also involved through take-home activities and volunteering (such as helping with field trip transportation and food preparation at these Saturday events).
The program can be implemented through two different models. In the faraway model, mentors work with the children monthly during Saturdays and then more intensively during a 2-week summer day program. From September through May, nine Saturday meetings are held with the children and their parents. The monthly daylong sessions (96 hours) and the 2-week summer program (8 hours a day for 6 consecutive days, for 48 total hours) equal 144 planned contact hours between mentees and mentors. In the nearby model of the program, mentors meet with the children after school for 2 hours each day twice a week across 9 months (72 hours) and for 6 hours in quarterly Saturday events (24 hours). Combined with the summer program (48 hours), which is optional but strongly recommended, this approach also provides 144 contact hours.
Key Personnel
School personnel (teachers and counselors) coordinate and oversee implementation of the program, conduct ongoing training and supervision of the mentors, and collect implementation and outcome data.
Program Theory
Both the structure and curricula of the Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program are designed to foster high school students’ leadership and collaboration skills, interest in serving their communities, and academic connectedness while simultaneously promoting elementary and middle school mentees’ connectedness (to school, family, and the future), self-esteem, and academic achievement. With its foundations in attachment and social-bonding theories of adolescent development (Ainsworth 1989; Jessor and Jessor 1977), ecological connectedness reflects youths’ engagement with and affection for people, places, and activities in their lives (e.g., school, family, friends; see Karcher and Sass 2010). Most curriculum activities foster conventional, future-oriented connections (e.g., to school) to offset the influence of unconventional connections to peers that increase during adolescence (Jessor and Jessor 1977). By seeking to promote connectedness to some of the relevant conventional domains of a child’s life (i.e., self, school, and family), the CAMP program aims to increase student achievement by fostering close relations with mentors and strengthening relationships with significant others in students’ lives, such as teachers, peers, and parents (Rhodes, Grossman, and Resch 2000).
The program is considered developmental because it aims to promote the psychosocial development of both mentors and mentees in two ways. First, it is expected that through program participation both mentors and mentees will form developmentally specific social and perspective-taking abilities, and will experience interpersonal support that serves to promote academic and future-oriented self-esteem and connectedness. Second, the tiered program allows elementary school student mentees to continue in the program for several years (through high school), developing into protégés (mentors in training) in middle school, and into mentors themselves in high school. Initially titled the Developmental Mentoring program, the name was changed to the Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program given that “developmental mentoring” already had a specific connotation in the research literature.
Developmental Mentoring as conceptualized within this program has five core elements: 1) structured mentoring activities, 2) ongoing supervision for the mentors, 3) monitoring program development, 4) controlling the frequency of contacts, and 5) facilitating parent involvement. These elements are supported by research on youth mentoring programs (DuBois et al. 2002). Participating schools must provide a suitable context for mentors and mentees to meet regularly, consent to including children who are both at low and high social and academic risk, and assign at least one school staff member to structure or supervise the mentoring program.
Program Note
The Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program has been adapted to reduce obesity (Smith 2011) and to prevent delinquency (Sar and Sterrett 2014). In addition, mentoring programs based on the Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program framework and core elements program have been developed and implemented in Chicago (Douglas 2014; see www.yolobe.com), Australia (Willis et al. 2012), and in both San Antonio and Atlanta by Boy with a Ball (see www.boywithaball.com).
