Making mentors

LYNN – College student Travonne Berry-Rogers said there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his former teacher Ginny Keenan, which is how he found himself running a training session for Lynn English High School’s Mentoring Program.”I love helping kids, because growing up I never really had that,” he said. “And I would do anything for Ginny, she really helped me out.”Now a junior at Merrimack College, Berry-Rogers, along with fellow alumni Sarah Cowdell, put volunteers through the paces of becoming mentors to Marshall Middle School eighth-graders.”The program started five years ago and I’ve been involved all those years,” said Cowdell, now a sophomore at Framingham State. “So it’s near and dear to my heart.”Keenan said she started the program because she found herself turning dozens of students away from the peer mediation program and she felt bad.”I would get 80 applications for peer mediation and I only had 15 spots,” she said.The Mentoring Program puts two high school students into each Marshall Middle School eighth grade classroom, where students role play, conduct workshops and generally give their young counterparts inside information on how to succeed in high school. Keenan said the students visit the classrooms, the same ones all year, every two to three weeks. They cover topics like conflict resolution, tips on making friends, bullying awareness, “high school hopes and fears,” and they urge them to get involved.”The whole idea is to prepare them for high school so when they get here they have some skills to succeed,” Keenan said.Berry-Rogers said he was only involved with the program for one year, “but I wish it had been more.”When the program first started the eighth-graders weren’t sure what to make of it, the second year went smoother and now students see it as a right of passage, Keenan said.”They see it as something extra they get to do that other students don’t,” she said.Senior Liz Edukugho said she applied to be a mentor during her sophomore year but didn’t make the cut.”I was young and immature,” she said. “I didn’t really have a chance but in my junior year I really fixed up my act.”Keenan said students are put through a fairly rigorous application process where grades, attitude, attendance and teacher references are taken into account.”This is really the cream of the crop of the school,” she said.Edukugho said she was accepted into the program this year and is nervous about the task before her but excited as well.Cameron Burke, who is in year two as a mentor, applied because he likes helping kids. He came from Pickering Middle School, which doesn’t have the program, and said he definitely could have benefited from one.Senior Matthew Demirs is in his third year of mentoring and he said he believes the program makes a big impact on the junior high students. The trick is to get the kids to open up, and he believes they are much more likely to open up to another student rather than an adult who appears to be lecturing them, he said.”I can say ?this is what it was like for me,'” he said. “We know the ropes, we can tell them who they should be friends with and how to act in the hallway.”Demirs said he thinks it’s a great opportunity for the kids to start becoming integrated into high school because “it’s the biggest four years of your life, and you really need to focus on doing it right.”