Mentoring Our Students to Success is a school-based academic and socio-emotional support program designed to help struggling students improve their academic skills and address behaviors and the underlying emotional issues and trauma that are impeding their ability to learn in the classroom and stay in school. Working with our trained volunteer mentors and professional Site Coordinators/Program Coordinators, students overwhelmingly advance to the next grade level and stay on track for graduation.
This program matches adult volunteer mentors to youth who are referred by a classroom teacher because they have been struggling in school both academically and socio-emotionally. After school hours are a vulnerable time for ever-increasing youth. Many of the young people in our program are alone for a significant amount of time after school. Our program provides a safe, nurturing, and productive place for them to spend these hours – and we’ve heard from our students that our program is an incentive for them to come to school in the morning and stay until the end of the day. Parents of the children in our program are working long hours and facing ever-increasing commutes. Our program provides a critical safety net and high-quality academic support resources that they otherwise would not be able to provide for their children.
Mentoring Our Students to Success volunteers commit to spending one hour a week with students for the entire school year. This duration of time is what is needed to build a healthy, reliable, consistent relationship. CISP employs six Program Coordinators and some of our Site Coordinators to implement the afterschool programs, including managing the volunteers and coordinating wrap-around services to address other obstacles to learning for each young person.
Elementary School Program
- Reading Mentor Program – supports 1st – 5th graders with reading fluency, comprehension, and building confidence as a reader.
- Math Mentor Program – supports 1st – 5th graders with equation strategies, homework help, and building confidence.