As we kick off season two of the Designing Education podcast during National Mentoring Month, Bob Balfanz is joined by Tim Wills, Chief Impact Officer for MENTOR, the leading organization in the nation working to scale high-quality mentoring in and out of school.
Positive relationships enable trust, which enables cooperation, and collective and engaged effort. They also serve as a buffer to the impacts of trauma and life's challenges. It is becoming more and more recognized that positive supportive relationships with adults are essential to school success. The pandemic drove home how important supportive relationships in schools between adults and students were to the wellbeing of all. Yet, middle and high schools have not been designed to support and enable strong adult-student relationships. Teachers often see 120 to 150 students a day, students interact with six to 10 or more adults every day for short periods of highly scripted time, which leaves little time or opportunity for students and teachers to get to know each other. As a result, everyone tends to interact with each other based on their role in the school. Thus, only about half of high school students report there is an adult at school who knows and cares about them as a person, with only about one third of students from historically underserved populations saying this. Those that said they had a supportive adult at school reported half the mental health challenges during the pandemic as those who did not. We can see that relationships really matter. They are not nice. They are necessary. So how do we close the relationship gap in schools? Tune in as we dig deep into this question.
As we kick off season two of the Designing Education podcast during National Mentoring Month, Bob Balfanz is joined by Tim Wills, Chief Impact Officer for MENTOR, the leading organization in the nation working to scale high-quality mentoring in and out of school.
Positive relationships enable trust, which enables cooperation, and collective and engaged effort. They also serve as a buffer to the impacts of trauma and life's challenges. It is becoming more and more recognized that positive supportive relationships with adults are essential to school success. The pandemic drove home how important supportive relationships in schools between adults and students were to the wellbeing of all. Yet, middle and high schools have not been designed to support and enable strong adult-student relationships. Teachers often see 120 to 150 students a day, students interact with six to 10 or more adults every day for short periods of highly scripted time, which leaves little time or opportunity for students and teachers to get to know each other. As a result, everyone tends to interact with each other based on their role in the school. Thus, only about half of high school students report there is an adult at school who knows and cares about them as a person, with only about one third of students from historically underserved populations saying this. Those that said they had a supportive adult at school reported half the mental health challenges during the pandemic as those who did not. We can see that relationships really matter. They are not nice. They are necessary. So how do we close the relationship gap in schools? Tune in as we dig deep into this question.
Bob (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. In today's episode, we're talking to Tim Wills about school-based mentoring and how we can design schools where every student feels supported and known. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast, and never miss an episode.
Bob (00:36):
Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, director of the Pathways to Adult Success Program and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the first episode of our second year of a series of conversations we are having with education leaders and thinkers and practitioners from across the country. We'll talk about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. In today's episode, we'll be joined by Tim Wills, Chief Impact Officer for MENTOR. Let's set the stage for our conversation. It is becoming more and more recognized that positive supportive relationships with adults are essential to school success. Positive relationships enable trust, which enables cooperation, and collective and engaged effort. They also serve as a buffer to the impacts of trauma and life's challenges.
Bob (01:34):
The pandemic drove home how important supportive relationships in schools between adults and students were to the wellbeing of all when they were broken by the pandemic. Students and teachers suffered. Yet middle and high schools, in particular, have not been designed to support and enable strong adult-student relationships. Teachers often see 120 to 150 students a day. No one has strong relationships with 150 people. Students interact with six to 10 or more adults every day for short periods of highly scripted time, leaving little time or opportunity for students and teachers to get to know each other as people. As a result, everyone tends to interact with each other based on their role, not as a person. This not only limits the development of positive relationships, it can make schooling positively dehumanizing for some. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising, though no less discouraging, that only about half of high school students report there is an adult at school who knows and cares about them as a person. And only about one third of students from historically underserved populations say this. Those that said they had a supportive adult at school reported half the mental health challenges during the pandemic as those who did not. So again, we can see relationships really matter. They are not nice. They are necessary. So how do we close the relationship gap in schools? We're going to dig deep into this question today with Tim Wills, for the leading organization in the nation working to scale high-quality mentoring in and out of school. Welcome, Tim.
Tim (03:07):
Good day, Bob. How are you doing today?
Bob (03:10):
Doing well, doing well. Before we dive into Designing Education, we like to start by asking all our guests, Tim, when you were in school, what was a good day?
Tim (03:20):
That's a fabulous question. You know, I often recall my first day of high school, when you're going from middle school as an eighth grader to ninth grade as a high schooler in this big building. And on the first day of school, our principal stood at the crossroads at the center of school and greeted every student by name. I never met the principal before, but she knew every single one of us, because every year it was her goal to study our student files with the picture in them so she can match kids' names when they walk into her new building every year. And so that's great. You know, this is an experience that has lasted in my mind, all these years later. And it just shows how important leadership is in schools.
Bob (04:12):
Yeah. I mean, you are being welcomed in as a person, right? Not just as an entity, you know, another body to…
Tim (04:18):
None of those things,
Bob (04:20):
Another body to educate. But you were a person to educate, right?
Tim (04:23):
Yeah. And she carried that with her throughout our entire high school experience.
Bob (04:28):
And it's amazing that just those little human touches, as you said, just stay with you. It's, you know…
Tim (04:33):
Yeah. Decades later. I still remember Principal Teer standing in the crossroads, welcoming students on their first day. It's pretty amazing.
Bob (05:05):
All right. Let's get into it. January is National Mentoring Month. Can you share with us a little bit about MENTOR and how it supports mentoring, and particularly school-based mentoring?
Tim (05:15):
Yeah, absolutely. MENTOR has been around for over 30 years, and we're the unifying champion for expanding the quality and quantity of mentoring relationships in the US. And we do that through a collaboration of our 24 affiliates around the country, and really focusing in on meeting young people where they are, in schools and workplaces and beyond, where they spend their time. MENTOR for mentoring programs provides free resources and training. We also provide technical assistance through the National Mentoring Resource Center, which is funded by the OJJDP. And then, in an effort to find more mentors to be connected, we operate the Mentoring Connector, which has about 2,500 vetted programs in the system, available for any adult in the United States to find a program that may meet their interests so that they can get involved.
Tim (06:15):
And then in January, every year, this month, which is National Mentoring Month, we also host the National Mentoring Summit as well in Washington DC. It's a really great opportunity to bring together the field from practitioners to policy makers, a cross section of corporate partners, it really puts them all in one room to share the best practices and research that's out. For school-based mentoring in particular, our strategic plan has been really focused on how do we impact and innovate systems, both workplace systems and education systems. So we've been really focused in on a consultative process we call relationship-centered schools, and been working with some school systems around the country in a pilot over the last couple of years, really looking at, how do we improve that web of supports for young people in their school buildings? As a part of that, we're super excited to be partnered with the National Partnership for Student Success, aimed at recruiting more mentors and being actively engaged in this recovery.
Bob (07:23):
Great. Great. I'm going to unpack a little bit of this with you for our audience. Let's do it. So, you know, some people, when they hear mentoring, they often have an image in their mind of this happening, you know, maybe on a weekend or maybe during an activity after school or in different places, but they don't often think of mentoring happening in schools. Can you just dig a little deeper into what it looks like when we mentor in schools, and what are some key features for that to be effective?
Tim (07:52):
Yeah, I think a lot of times when folks do think about mentoring, you automatically think around that one-to-one match, right? But mentoring happens in a lot of different places and spaces in which young people spend their time: before school, during school, after school, post-school. Mentoring happens in a lot of ways for young people. I think the great thing about a school mentoring program, is that it's a guaranteed place where we know young people are going to come every day, right? Just the consistency is the main thing that young people need in their lives. And with that consistency, they need adults who are going to be intentional about the approach in which they’re mentoring young people. And so I think with school systems and education systems, there's just so much potential to create these relationship-rich environments for young people that we don't always consider.
Tim (08:49):
We always, when we talk about education, we talk about it from a very fact-finding perspective. The percentage of young people who showed up every day, the percentage of young people who are proficient in reading. And we largely discount the relationships that surround student success, where adult and student relationships can really elevate how young people can feel seen, how they can feel heard, how they can feel valued. And meeting young people where they are in their social and emotional needs, I think, is really key.
Bob (09:28):
Yeah. I remember one of the efforts we partnered with MENTOR on was the Success Mentor effort during the Obama administration. And that was really aimed at chronic absenteeism. So what was sort of a specific goal, in addition to good relationship-building in general, then build on that to help figure out how to get kids to the school more often. And one of the things that we observed with MENTOR was that the mentors could be a range of folks. Sometimes it was school staff, it could be a teacher, it could be the secretary who meets you in the morning. It could be the cafeteria worker. Also, some schools also brought in local partners. They brought in like local firemen who had time or all kinds of folks.
Bob (10:11):
So it was a combination of in people in the staff and outside of the staff. And what we found, and I know what MENTOR has found, is that it's not so much who the person is, it's what they do. And it is having that continual connection with kids. So, we knew for chronic absenteeism, it was important to have even three—and they could be very brief—but three touch points a week, really to be— because you had to be in the mix with them. It'd be part of their ongoing existence. Because we know with kids, they can be fine one day and not the next. And if you're only cycling around once every three weeks, you miss a lot.
Tim (10:47):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Bob (10:49):
So, I think that's one thing for the audience to understand. And school-based mentoring is often going to be a little more intensive or continuous than some of the more traditional models they might have in head.
Tim (11:00):
Yeah. And I think it's really important for schools too, you know, through our consultative process, relationship mapping is really important. Which is not a hard process, right? A super easy process to get through. But it's really around gauging the web, the supports around for a young person, so that when you walk up to a young person in a school and ask them what adult cares about you, they can name at least one person in their life who is that person. And I think a lot of times in our relationship-mapping process, we realize that there is some kids who literally have no one in their lives that they can depend on that are there for them, and that they're just unintentionally being left behind. And so I think the more we can start measuring and understanding how relationships matter in young people's lives and who are the people in a kid's life that help them, whether it's the cafeteria worker or the principal or the superintendent, or their barber, there are people that impact how young people succeed every day. Through success mentors we saw…
Tim (12:12):
That increased attendance. Yep. When you feel seen and heard, you want to keep going to a place where you're valued. And the more we can do that, I think the more it drives academic success, the more it drives attendance, it's a driver for so many other components that are important for young people's development.
Bob (12:32):
Yeah. And you mentioned relationship mapping. And I think, for our audience, just to unpack that a little, is that, sometimes again, it may seem daunting. How do we know if we have relationships with all our kids? That seems really hard. But as it turns out, adults know who they have relationships with, right? You ask all the teachers to sit around the list of the kids in their classes and put a check mark next to the ones they know. In an hour you have the kids who don't have relationships. Yes. And again, it's one of those things that may seem daunting but isn't, and you get very powerful insight and data from that. And then, you know how many mentors might we need to recruit, to fill that gap.
Tim (13:10):
Yeah. And broadening that mapping out from just the classroom teacher look in education, I believe we put too much on classroom teachers. That young person may have a relationship with a cafeteria worker or the school custodial staff, [and] every single adult relationship in that building matters, and we should map who they are. When I was in elementary school, the person who was my go-to in our school building was our school secretary. She knew me, my siblings, my parents, she knew all of us from our interactions in the office. So she was a dependable person, regardless if in first grade I had teacher A and in third grade I had teacher B, our school secretary was there every day in my life through elementary school, she didn't change. And so we also have to think about who are the other adults in kids’ lives in those school buildings who also have an incredible impact in their lives.
Bob (14:10):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you've talked a little bit about why we need good relationships. We've talked a little bit about how mentoring could work. Could you put those two together for us and just share a little bit of the evidence we have on the impacts of high-quality mentoring?
Tim (14:26):
Yeah, absolutely. I think we already talked around attendance, right? We know that attendance increases, the more quality relationships young people have. We also know that young people who are in quality mentoring relationships participate outside of school in more activities as well. So, it is estimated around 81% of young people participating in sports and extracurricular activities have a positive interaction with mentoring. I think what's also really profound is that [there are] two times more opportunities to be in leadership roles for young people when it comes to those activities as well. Again, when you have people in your life who are rooting for you in different spaces and places where you're spending your time, you're more likely to come out of your shell and to be involved and engaged. Young people who are mentored are more likely to be involved in volunteer opportunities in their community. So every indication shows that the more we can place young people in a caring relationship, the better the outcomes for them. We also know that when we think about the pandemic and COVID in particular, when young people were disconnected from their everyday day connections at school, they were relegated to being behind Zoom screens for their educational experiences for a period of time. What we also don't talk enough about is that there's some estimated 200,000 young people who lost a caregiver or parent due to COVID. That's devastating.
Bob (16:12):
It's really, really, really bad.
Tim (16:15):
Really devastating. And mentors play an important role in helping young people recover from that. You know, we have a new study coming out this month that's going to reflect that one of the top reasons young people are seeking out mentors right now is for not just their own mental health, but also for connectedness to an adult because they lost a primary adult or caregiver in their life due to COVID 19. So there's so many reasons why mentoring is so important to the development of young people throughout our country.
Bob (16:54):
Yeah. And those devastating impacts of COVID on students, and losing their caregivers, are further magnified when you look at how many students may not have lost a caregiver, but lost a grandparent. And grandparents often play a key role in mentoring, being that other adult beyond your parents who can give you some support and wisdom. And I don't have the date offhand, but I know that almost four times as [many] as those that lost a caregiver, lost a grandparent.
Tim (17:23):
Yeah, it's a devastating moment right now for young people that we can recover from. We can come out of this stronger than we went into it. But it really does require all adults to be all hands on deck, and to understand that we're in a crisis of connection right now, and we have the ability at our fingertips to play a role in a young person's life that can reduce the effects of this crisis, both the crisis of COVID 19, [and also] just this basic crisis of connection.
Bob (17:59):
Yeah. So true. And one other thing. I just wanted to pick up on what you said, the statistic that kids with a supportive mentor are more likely to be involved in extracurriculars or even leadership activities of extracurriculars, and that just linked to something in my mind about [what] we're learning about belonging. In many ways our schools are designed to say, if you achieve, then you belong. Without recognizing that you often have to belong to achieve.
Tim (18:26):
Absolutely. Absolutely. You go back to the gang prevention times, where belonging was a big piece. Young people wanted to feel a sense of belonging to a group. And we did a lot of work around gang prevention to change the trajectory for so many young people. This is our opportunity to double down even more on the ability to put caring adults in kids' lives, who are there on a consistent basis with them, who are champions for their success.
Bob (18:59):
Yeah. So we've talked a lot about the power and the success of mentors. I want to just take a moment now to dig a little bit into what are some conditions or circumstances when we might not get these outcomes, when the mentoring might not have the enabling conditions. What needs to be true for mentoring to really work?
Tim (19:21):
Yeah. I think when we look at mentoring overall, right now we have about one in three young people who don't have a quality mentoring relationship. I think a lot of times in the mentoring relationship, adults may believe that there's a lot more work to this than there actually is. It's not hard to show up for a young person and ask them how they're doing for that day, or to check in on their progress on a test or to ensure they went to school one day. So, I think one of the lingering challenges is for folks just to understand that being a mentor isn't a heavy lift on your end. It's just the matter of being present for a young person. All the other pieces will begin to fall in place…
Tim (20:17):
… in that process. There's been a huge growth in program-based mentoring that exists around the country. But still, again, they're lacking adults who want to be those quality mentors in kids’ lives. So I just want to encourage folks to just step back for a moment and think about who were the people in your life that were successful, and who were the people in your life that mentored you as you were coming up, and just look at like, it wasn't that hard for them to help you, and it's not going to be that hard for you to help another generation of young people in that process.
Bob (20:56):
Yeah. Very true. That I think really leads into my next question, which is, and you mentioned this in your opening, that MENTOR is currently partnering with the Everyone Graduates Center, and many, many others, on the National Partnership for Student Success, which is a public-private effort with the Department of Education and AmeriCorps and the White House with this ambitious goal of getting 250,000 more adults involved in providing evidence-based student supports, including mentoring, to students in and out of school. It’s both a response to the pandemic and, as you pointed out, just to create the conditions under which students can thrive. So, I hear you, and I agree, that mentoring might not be quite this extensive commitment that sometimes people think it is, and there's a lot that can be done in a way that's manageable, but that's a pretty big number. What has MENTOR learned about where we can find effective school-based mentors or mentors in general?
Tim (21:58):
Yeah. I think when we think about this from a relationship standpoint, you find them in the crossing guard every day, or the bus driver, or the bus aide. These folks are around young people every day. They may not just have the tools and the training that an organization like MENTOR and some of our other partners can provide to make sure that their interactions are relationship-rich for young people. We're talking about— with NPSS we talk a lot about people-powered supports. Those people exist every day in kids’ lives. So the more we can talk about how to show up as a coach or a neighbor, or an afterschool provider, that will better help us drive to that 250,000 number. Those folks exist right now every day in communities….
Tim (22:57):
… supporting young people from your church to the grocery store, these folks exist every single day.
Bob (3:36):
Yeah. Really good point. And one of the other ways that we've been thinking about is college work-study students. It turns out there are about 600,000 students that get college work-study funding. They work 10 to 15 hours a week. There's already a provision in the law that they could do some of that as community service working with their local schools. So that's one area we see there could be a good number of additional potential mentors.
Tim (24:03):
No, absolutely. Before I joined MENTOR, I was with Boys and Girls Clubs in Alabama, and we had agreements with our local universities on utilizing federal work study students as tutors and mentors for young people at Boys and Girls Club locations throughout our community. It's possible [if we have the] the will, you know, we have to meet the moment. There's a lot of resources that exist that we have to leverage better for young people and respond immediately to the needs that they have. It requires sometimes for us to think out of the box for the resources that already exist. We're doing that with the National Mentoring Resource Center and kind of doubling down with NPSS to provide more supports, technical assistance and support to schools who reach out through this process as well. And so the more we can, as adults in leadership roles, be intentional about this process, be focused in on the youth outcomes and be relationship-centered, I think we'll get there easily.
Bob (25:07):
Yeah. And I want to actually test one more idea out on you, which is peer-based mentoring. Twelfth graders mentoring ninth graders, eighth graders, mentoring sixth graders. What do you think about that? What do we know about that?
Tim (25:19):
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think we're starting to see more and more districts focus in on peer-based mentoring programs. I think they're a really important complement because young people can build quality relationships with each other with adult guidance and expertise. I think it should be part of a larger strategy for a school system or a school building in addressing how we work more and be intentional with young people. It can't be a singular solution. It has to be a mix as a part of a full strategy with young people.
Bob (26:00):
Yeah. I mean, I've seen it only works when there's a lot of adult guidance and support behind it.
Tim (26:04):
Absolutely. Absolutely. But then it has, and the school is perfect for a peer mentoring program because it provides that overarching structure that's needed for a mentoring program just in the way schools operate on a day to day basis. And so, there's a real lot of opportunity for peer-based mentoring programs.
Bob (26:25):
Yeah. And speaking of opportunities, I've seen, and I've heard, and I know that one of MENTOR’s new initiatives—and you mentioned this—is relationship-centered schools. And, given that our podcast is focused on designing education, I find this fascinating. Can you tell us more about what a relationship-centered school is and what does it take to become one?
Tim (26:47):
Yeah, absolutely. It's based in this theory around, from pre-K to first job, how can we make all of the spaces in which young people exist, be relationship-centered? I spoke earlier around before school, during school, after school and post school. How can we make all of those relationship-centered? We can do that, one, by normalizing student voice, give young people the opportunity to help in the creation of the programs that are going to affect them. I think sometimes we don't spend enough time having the client lead us in the education realm, and the client is the young people that we're serving. So part of our relationship-centered school framework is high youth engagement in the process of designing all of this. The second piece is training school staff in particular around critical mentoring.
Tim (27:57):
And that really is focusing on factors around race, class, and gender, and how they contribute to students' identities and how what we're doing through a relationship in schools is not just that one-on-one or one-on-two interaction with a young person, but also what are the policies that surround the school environment and how are we making those policies more relationship-rich as well in the process. Yeah. And then the last thing, which we talked about earlier, was around relationship mapping and being intentional about identifying which students lack trusting relationships with adults, and then the resources they need and connections they need to meet those gaps. When we combine all of those things, you begin to develop a much more relationship-centered school that's going to drive the other outcomes that are important to school systems.
Bob (28:54):
Yeah. No, this is so exciting because as I said in my intro, and you'll hear soon in my close, in some ways the traditional middle or high school, couldn't have been designed more to discourage relationships than they were. It's really [important to] understand we have to redesign a little here to be supportive of relationships and not discouraging or diminishing or not even value them as nice, let alone necessary.
Tim (29:23):
Yeah. That's the structural change that we're looking for in schools. When a young person's in elementary school we're talking one teacher for every 20 kids; when you get to middle and high school, you're talking one teacher to 120 to 150 young people in a class that they're managing. And so it becomes incredibly hard for them to build those relationship-rich times with young people in their classes. But if it wasn't just the responsibility of the classroom teacher, if [it was the] responsibility of the entire school community, just think how much we could change trajectory and transform education for young people in this country. Yeah. It would be remarkable, and it would drive the other indicators that we always say are really important to us as adults.
Bob (30:15):
Yeah. No, so true. And one thread I wanted to pick up that you mentioned there was youth voice. So we've done some work on high school redesign, and similarly, we found that the schools that have been most open to, most encouraging of, most seeking of youth voice were the ones that ultimately did the most ambitious reforms. And, to your point, if you actually talked to the kids, the people who know most what goes on in schools, they'll come up with some of the biggest boldest changes. And not just tinkering on the edges.
Tim (30:50):
Yeah, absolutely. I think young people having a voice in our response to helping them learn and grow is critically important. We have to be truthful about where we stand as a country when it comes to education. We operate in an education system that was built back in the 1900s and 1930s, right around industrial complexes. We still teach young people in that same manner today, which is not the world in which they live in on a daily basis. I think it's critically important that as often and as much as possible, we engage young people and their voice in anything we're doing to serve them, because they know best how they best learn, how they best engage, and how they best can take the skills that we're teaching them and apply them to their real life. The less we do that, the more of the cycle we continue to be in. I think young people need to be on school boards around the country more often and have voting power for their voice. Young people should attend school staff meetings as needed, to provide voice to leaders in education as well. The more we can encourage and engage young people, the better the outcomes will come for them.
Bob (32:11):
Yeah. So true. So let's end by going big. We've been talking about this the whole time, but let's really bring it home, which is, what will it take for high-quality school-based mentoring or mentoring more broadly to become a standard part of what schools provide? And in thinking about that, let's, as you mentioned a little before, like, given where we are with things like with race, class, and gender, what will it take? So it just becomes a normative part of schools in a way that works for everybody.
Tim (32:43):
Yeah. I think we'll just dive into awareness. The more we can make schools and districts aware of how important relationships are to young people and mentoring is to young people, and how it correlates to their academic success, and how we can start tracking relationships like we track other things for young people, I think it will become a standard practice around the country. It's going to take us a little while on the up ramp. But we see right now through our pilots that we've been doing with our affiliates around the country from California to Baltimore, that when districts get it, they get it and go big in that process. Baltimore City's a great example that created an entire department of mentoring because they understand the power of relationships in that area. And then I think we're at a really interesting point in our country right now, after this pandemic and this crisis around connection, that we've been to a place that we've never been before.
Tim (33:49):
And we have an opportunity right at this moment to redesign how we think about education in this country, and place relationships as the centerpiece of that, and the people-powered supports that go into that to drive academic success for young people in our country. Once we all get on the same page around how important the relationship component is for young people, the clearer we will be on their academic achievement as a result of it. Because we can't have another year like we've had this year, with the report cards that were issued and just incredible loss in reading and math in particular. But we also see young people have an even deeper loss when it comes to connections in their lives during that time. And so I think we have the opportunity right now, we have the support in administration right now, we have dollars that are flowing to school systems right now, to really take this as an opportunity to, for lack of better words, redesign education.
Bob (34:55):
There you go. Tim
Bob (35:42):
Well, thank you so much, Tim. As we close out, are there any last words you'd like to share with the audience or let them know where they can learn more about what we discussed today?
Tim (35:51):
Yeah, absolutely. This is January. So National Mentoring Month is going on right now. There is an opportunity for you to thank your mentor this month through a video campaign. So please join us with the hashtag #thankyourmentor. You can also reach us online at www.mentoring.org to find out more about MENTOR.
Bob (36:13):
Thank you Tim. To bring our discussion to a close, I would like to thank Tim again for sharing his insights and learnings [on] high-quality mentoring and how to design schools to close the relationship gap so everybody knows they have someone in their corner. And as Tim pointed out, traditionally elementary schools have been designed as communities. A group of 20 to 30 students spends a whole year together with a teacher and engages in a series of shared experience. This creates an environment in which positive relationships can develop and thrive. In middle and high schools, we progressively put students on individual journeys where they interact with a constantly changing set of adults and students. But if anything, as we learn more and more about adolescent development, it becomes more and more clear that they need supportive adult relationships to succeed. To meet this need, we need to design schools so that teachers and school staff and adults from the community can work hand in hand to provide the web of relationship supports that enable all students to thrive.
Bob (37:10):
As we have learned today, school-based mentoring is a key way to address this relationship gap, as are the Success Coaches we learned about in the fourth podcast of our first year with Jonathan Mathis from City Year. Before we let you go, we wanted to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying this show, leave us a five star review. Also, please share the findings with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success project. Thank you, everyone, for listening and we invite you to listen to the other episodes on our Designing Education series wherever you listen to podcasts. Onward and be well.