WESTERVILLE, Ohio — The goal to positively impact high school males at Westerville North High School has turned many lives around during the last five months.
What You Need To Know
- The Warrior Promise Mentoring Program started in January
- 30 upperclassmen mentored 30 underclassmen
- The peer-to-peer mentoring helped to build new relationships, boost grades and confidence
Tim Brown is the program coordinator of the Warrior Promise Mentoring Program, and has mentored young people all across central Ohio. Often, he’s had help from older adults to guide students down positive paths.
This time, it was all about peer-to-peer mentorship.
Brown said, while adults can help young people who don’t have positive role models or fathers in the home, there is still a gap. Having those closer to their age dealing with similar issues, mentor each other is a game changer, especially for those transitioning from middle to high school.
“Statistics tell us that if you catch a guy in ninth grade, if they can get started on the right track as a ninth grader, they’ll make it through high school and do well,” Brown said.
Andrew Bracken, 17, got to mentor a student. Bracken was unsure of how it would turn out and if all the guys invited to mentor their peers would stick around, because several invited were top athletes and “big names” in school.
To his surprise, no one backed out.
Excited about the opportunity, Bracken mentored a peer who was struggling with his grades by sharing his own experiences and struggles. That included letting him know he needed to think about the big picture.
“So big picture. I know I need to do well in this class if I want to go on. So now, it’s tied to something important in my life. So I know I’m going to try a little bit harder than I was before,” said Bracken. “He’s passing all his classes now and he seems to be enjoying it more.”
For Bracken, he said being able to make an impact feels nice to help someone through the problems that he felt he didn’t really have as much help in and had to figure it out himself.
“So being able to see someone succeed where I didn’t, at his age, it’s got to be one of the best feelings I have,” he said. “In school, I feel like I’m a part of like the solution, like helping to make this a better place.”
Brown said as the changes are happening, it’s solving another problem.
“So right now we have a gap in leadership amongst men,” Brown said. “So we want to fill that void, want to fill that gap where we have a pipeline of leadership, where young men aspire to be class president, aspire to be valedictorian, more so than aspire to be the prom king.”
Additionally, they feel it is helping students become confident while learning who they are as young men and leaders.
The hope now is that they’ll be able to expand the program and include more students next year.
