Jose Colon Capstone
An efficient peer to peer mentor ship program is something that is very challenging to organize. Unfortunately I learned this the hard way, over the course of the nine months which I had to organize my very own peer to peer mentor ship program. Sadly the mentor ship program which I have organised with only two members who were actually fully able to participate isn’t what I expected it to become. All the beneficial principles still apply to the outcome of an efficient peer to peer mentor ship program, members both mentees and mentors of program still develop communication and self advocacy skills. However the approach we take to starting the program can ultimately determine its consistency and success. In other words the program I organised tended to have a majority of senior upperclassman participating as mentors, which was ideal at the time because these students had the most high school experience. However high school seniors at Science Leadership Academy At Beeber tend to have a full plate with applying to colleges, working on their capstone projects, and just keeping up with the usual load of school work they have. So I found that not many mentors had the time to meet weekly with their mentees. Another issue was that the way I started the program; it could have been much better in terms of the process in choosing mentors and mentees to participate. Originally mentors would have to go through mentor training to have a mentee but including this within the program is almost another program interior on its own. That being said organizing both these things at the same time made it more difficult to make sure both aspects were running efficiently. Lastly when I was organizing this program I had two mentors, but I still couldn’t organize all these things by myself in time to start the program early on in the year. Starting the program early on in the year is probably another major aspect of an efficient mentor ship program, this way mentors and mentees can get to know each other throughout the year not half way through it. The reason I was unable to start the program like this is because I had to first organize everything on my own, if I were to start over I would work on this during the summer leading up to the school year.