Peer Mentoring At Great Neck School

About seven years ago, had a fifth-grade student who had no interest in school and was getting in trouble at home. So Principal Pat Fedor had him teach a younger child with special needs how to play basketball.

The two quickly bonded, and both were benefitting: the special needs child had a friend, and the fifth-grader suddenly enjoyed going to school. But perhaps who benefitted the most was Fedor, who realized a new program to help children.

“I thought, we have lots of great kids who can learn from each other,” Fedor wrote in an e-mail to Patch. “At the start of the new school year, I spoke to (adaptive physical education teacher) Paula MacDonald, (school psychologist Virginia) Murray and (school psychologist) Amy Keating and we developed the first run of the Fifth Grade Mentor Program.”

The Program

Early in the year, all fifth-graders go through mentor training, which is currently two sessions, Fedor said. Then students are given the option of mentoring younger students, with 100 percent of fifth-graders taking that option this year, she said.

The mentoring assignments vary in length and style. Some of the mentors work with children one-on-one for several weeks, while others will help a teacher in a class, according to MacDonald.

The program has become a part of Great Neck’s intervention program, Fedor said. If a child is having trouble in class, often the teacher will ask for a fifth-grade mentor because of the effectiveness of the program, she said.  

“I think sometimes the kids will accept the help better from somebody they consider an equal rather than an adult,” Murray said. “It is more meaningful to them.”

To increase responsibility, the fifth-graders are given directions of where to go to mentor, and are not reminded by their teachers, MacDonald said. That is a piece of paper “they won’t lose,” she said.

Students' Reaction

Patch interviewed three fifth-graders who are currently in the mentoring program. All three said they benefit from the program.

“I feel happy, because I feel like I’m helping out somebody who needs help,” fifth-grader Elle Lokken said.

Fellow fifth-grader Liam Spellman agreed.

“It makes me feel warm inside,” Spellman said.

The students also said they felt additional responsibility to be a good role model. If they are bad role models, the mentoring will be ineffective, they said.

“You have to be a really good role model for them,” Lokken said. “Because when they get older, they’ll have to be mentors. And if I teach her what to know and stuff, maybe she’ll remember what I taught her, and use that for whatever she does for mentoring.”

Adult Reaction

Fedor, MacDonald and Murray said having student-to-student mentoring is far more effective than even adult mentors. And most importantly, the students enjoy it, MacDonald said.

 “When they are in fourth grade they are asking to be mentors and they can’t wait to until they’re in fifth grade to become part of the mentor program,” she said.

Mentor programs are a commonly referenced by politicians as ways to improve school. But unlike politicians, this program is not about talk, it is about action, Fedor said.

“While they talk about it we do it,” she said. “And we do it at no cost.”