Shared Leadership with 12th grade - 9th grade mentorship program

Having all seniors in my classes, I took notice when my principal spoke of a need for helping freshmen through the difficult transition from the 8t to the 9th grade. It occurred to me that since the seniors were in a very real sense the "experts" in succeeding in the school ,  they were the people best equipped to help the freshmen through this transition. I began by researching mentorship programs and settled in on a strategy of administering a survey to both 8th and 9th grade students and then training the seniors to be one-on-one-mentors. The 8th grade survey would focus on the concerns and fears being experienced by the students before they entered high school, while the 9th grade survey, administered at the end of the year, measured the actual problems faced by the students during their freshmen year. Based on research and survey results, we developed a curriculum and a program. The 12th grade students went through a training session to help them in the mentoring tasks, and we then held four one hour mentoring sessions for the freshmen in the opening weeks of the school year. Survey results can be seen as a PowerPoint presentation here. Read an article describing the outcome of the program  here .