A new partnership between the Schenectady City School District and Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region will see elementary school students in the district mentored by their high school counterparts.
The pilot program, which will continue throughout the remainder of the school year, allows third-grade students from Zoller Elementary School and Yates Elementary School to receive guidance from 43 student mentors from the district’s City As Our Campus high school initiative.
The program starts Monday with the students participating in an activity to determine common interests between the third graders and the high school students.
The young students will be paired with high school pupils based on their individual personalities and strengths.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region (BBBSCR) reached out to the Schenectady district to partner for the pilot program, which is the first offered by the local chapter of the national mentoring organization.
“This is a pilot program that is happening across the country, with 12 Big Brother Big Sister affiliates taking part in this pilot across the country and we are one of them,” BBBSCR Chief Executive Officer Lea Montalto-Rook said. “We’re bringing this mentorship program to the Capital Region and I was aware that Schenectady has been investing in a lot of innovating programming.”
The program will pair one classroom of high school students with one classroom of third-grade students from both Yates and Zoller elementaries.
“What’s especially unique about this project is that it’s taking entire classrooms of students and pairing them,” Montalto-Rook said. “Usually something like this happens after school and it doesn’t have a curriculum associated with it, but this program has a curriculum that the students are working through on a weekly basis. That is designed to help them combat the residual effects of the pandemic. It’s specifically tailored towards that learning loss that children have experienced due to the pandemic and working through their social challenges.”
The nonprofit mentoring organization secured a grant from BOCES to assist in funding the program.
The initiative will feature weekly one-hour mentoring sessions that will occur throughout the school year, with the matched students sharing lunch and participating in programming customized to each third-grade student’s needs.
Families interested in participating in the program can access applications for both mentors and mentees on the BBBSCR website.
“Thank you to Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region for offering this fantastic mentoring opportunity to our students,” Schenectady Superintendent Anibal Soler, Jr. noted in a statement. “Mentorship is powerful. This opportunity empowers our high school role models to serve to support and develop our younger students. It’s powerful on both ends. We are excited for this partnership and program.”