Tanapag Elementary School is looking for volunteers who can provide additional adult support for its students amid plans to launch early next year a school-based mentoring program at Saipan\u2019s smallest public school. <\/p>\n
School counselor Shimiko Montgomery announced yesterday at the Rotary Club of Saipan general membership meeting that they are looking for adult volunteers without criminal records for their school-based mentoring program, which will start by the second week of January 2012.<\/p>\n
Deadline to submit mentor applications is on Nov. 18 to allow them to start their \u201cmatching process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Montgomery said the program is modeled after the Big Brothers Big Sisters, the largest donor and volunteer supported mentoring network in the U.S., and is an upshot of their brainstorming process on what the community can do to help students deal with emotional, behavioral, and academic issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that we definitely know is that if [the students] have a lot of emotional issues, it equals a low academic achievement,\u201d said Montgomery. <\/p>\n
She noted that Tanapag Elementary School, which has 197 students from kindergarten to 6th grade, has almost 80 percent of its students eligible for the free meal school program and has been identified by the CNMI Public School System as one of five \u201cturnaround schools,\u201d which means it does not meet the academic goals and standards of PSS.<\/p>\n
At present, Montgomery said only 34 percent of students in the CNMI are able to score at or above the 50th percentile on the nationwide SAT10 test, with only 39 percent of the benchmarks at or above standard and that Standards Based Assessment has been stagnant at around 40 percent for the past seven years.<\/p>\n
A youth-risk behavior survey last year showed that 40 percent of high school students \u201cfelt so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that they stopped doing some usual activities during the past 12 months,\u201d Montgomery said, while 34 percent of middle school students reported that \u201cthey seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the top issues that they deal with at the Tanapag Elementary School, Montgomery said, are low motivation, aggression, and truancy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur youth definitely need caring and consistent relationships with adults to be able to navigate their way through adolescence. That we know. Research had shown that,\u201d said Montgomery.<\/p>\n
According to her, many of their students come from households with single parents, parents who are off-island, have passed away, or are incarcerated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have a lot of students that come from homes that can\u2019t provide caring and consistent relationships for them. That\u2019s why we\u2019re starting a school-based mentoring program,\u201d said Montgomery, adding that the program aims to be a \u201cprevention,\u201d not an intervention.<\/p>\n
Montgomery said that the 15 students referred to the program will be matched with any of the mentors based on the likes, dislikes, and personalities, among others, of both parties. \u201cWe need as many [mentor] applicants as possible so that we can find the best matches for these students,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The program will involve the mentor meeting for an hour with their mentees, with structured activities facilitated by Montgomery once every two weeks until June 2012, which is equivalent to 10 sessions.<\/p>\n
Montgomery said they highly discourage pulling out in the middle of the program since it will do \u201csignificant damage\u201d to the student. \u201cThese students are kids that most likely don\u2019t have a dependable relationship at home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The counselor also noted that the students\u2019 parents, who have been receptive of the program, will play \u201ca big part\u201d in the mentor selection process for their children so they \u201care not being left out of this whole thing.\u201d \u201cI think that\u2019s very important so that they understand where we\u2019re going and that we\u2019re not replacing them,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The students, Montgomery said, \u201cwill make the same mistake every time\u201d which is why mentors \u201ccannot expect to see dramatic changes because they\u2019re very slim.\u201d \u201cBut you will see slight changes and that really is all we\u2019re hoping for.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is successful, we will build upon it because the outcomes have been so drastic in other public school systems that we really have high hopes for this program. But of course, the key to this is volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n
For an application packet or for more information, call 237-3177 or email shimiko.montgomery@cnmipss.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tanapag Elementary School is looking for volunteers who can provide additional adult support for its students amid plans to launch early next year a school-based mentoring program at Saipan\u2019s smallest public school. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}