Program Description

Mission:
The Dallas Independent School District has made a call to the community to provide volunteers who are willing to serve as Mentors for students that normally would not have a person who is caring, supportive, and tends to spend positive time in their lives.

The Youth Mentoring Initiative has developed a coordinated effort to recruit, train, place and match adult mentors with students in the ninth grade. This grade level is critical in terms of students that are becoming credit-deficient and overage, thus potentially a school dropout. Targeted high schools have been identified throughout the city. The challenge is to recruit and sustain 300 mentors annually.

Goals:
This initiative will develop the following procedures and outcomes:

  • Implement a massive yet coordinated mentor recruitment strategy;
  • A comprehensive training and orientation process that meets the needs of the District and volunteers has been developed and implemented.
  • The coordinated placement process of mentors has been developed and monitored;
  • In the Spring of each academic year students will be identified by need priorities and program impact will be evaluated annually;
  • Mentor participation will be reviewed and evaluated on a quarterly basis.
  • A cooperative effort and memorandum of understanding has been established with Big Brother/Big Sisters to recruit and train and match mentors.
Mentoring: What is it?
Broadly defined, mentoring is a sustained "one-to-one relationship between a caring adult and a child who needs support to achieve academic, career, social and personal goals." The following are two types of mentoring that will be implemented;

Personal development mentoring... supporting a youth during times of personal or social stress and providing guidance for decision-making. This type of mentoring helps the youth to focus on improving self-esteem, behavior, and decision-making ability; reducing high risk behavior. This type of mentoring also helps the youth in career development. This relationship can take place once per week, one hour per session.
Educational or academic mentoring...focuses on improving students' overall academic achievement through a more formal relationship in tutoring on specific instructional objectives. This type of mentoring also can help the youth in developing their skills needed to enter or continue a career pathway. This relationship can take place two to three times per week, one hour per session.

For more information, contact Rachel Moon at (972) 925-3970 or rmoon@dallasisd.org.