New approach to mentoring at Whittier

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA -- Whittier Elementary School administrators have revamped

their version of a nationally acclaimed mentoring program this year after

discovering a drop in the test scores of students who participated in it.

While the school saw a 73-point jump in its overall Academic

Performance Index score released in October, a breakdown of data showed

that the results of students who participated in the Helping One Student

To Succeed -- or HOSTS -- plummeted, said Principal Sharon Blakely.

HOSTS is a national, academic mentoring program that trains community

volunteers to accelerate student learning in reading, language arts,

Spanish language arts and math through one-on-one sessions. At Whittier,

about 80 volunteers worked individually with students during the last

school year, when the program was put in place.

“When we started, HOSTS data showed they were learning fine,” Blakely

said. “We thought [HOSTS students] were contributing to the rise, then we

found out 52% of the children in HOSTS went down.”

Whittier adopted the program last year as part of the state’s

$96-million intervention program for underproducing schools.

Administrators began with the language arts program, Blakely said, and

had planned to add math in the second year.

Despite the drop in test scores, HOSTS officials suggested that the

school continue the program in hopes that things would turn around,

Blakely said.

“We said ‘no, we only have one more year with these guys -- we can’t

let them lose more ground,’ ” she said. “So my decision was -- and the

state evaluator and staff agreed -- we would not revisit it.”

Blakely was not content to accept the failure, but wanted to know

where the program had failed. She and her staff discovered several

problems they felt contributed to the program’s breakdown.

Not only were children losing an hour of valuable classroom

instruction, but many students could not relate to the stories taught in

the lesson because they had, for example, never been to the zoo or the

beach.

Also, in one-on-one sessions with a mentor, the children were deprived

of the help from interaction with other students.

“In the classroom, they were talking about their learning with other

students. If they didn’t understand something, one can explain to

another,” Blakely said. “They didn’t have that. With one adult, that was

missing.”

Armed with some new ideas, school officials quickly rearranged the

program.

When mentors showed up this year, there was a fresh, new program. No

longer were there one-on-one mentoring sessions for one hour each week.

Mentors now work with a group of two or three students for three and a

half hours, twice a week. Students are given math problems and vocabulary

words. They also read and review materials that was taught in class the

month before.

Mentor volunteers see the changes as positive ones.

“It made a lot of sense because a lot of times the kids would read

very well and you would ask what a word meant and they didn’t know,” said

Gary Beverage, a second-year mentor. “They’ve had a very limited life

experience, so it was hard for them to connect what they were reading

with their life experience.”

Rebecca Keahey, a Newport-Mesa Unified School District employee who is

also a mentor, said having more than one child assigned to each volunteer

put the students at ease.

“I think it’s a plus because they help each other,” she said. “They

warmed up to me more -- they were not with an adult by themselves.”

District officials are pleased that Whittier educators caught the

program’s failure so quickly.

“We would have all gone on believing it was a wonderful thing because

that’s what research said,” said Bonnie Swann, Newport-Mesa’s director of

elementary education. “The power of instruction in their classrooms was

so strong that they could not make up for it, even with one-on-one

instruction with a pair of professionals. So it’s a real compliment to

Whittier.”