How One School’s Mentorship Program Paid Off Big in Academic Gains

Fifteen years ago, educators at Oregon Junior/Senior High School in northern Illinois realized something needed to change: Too many of their 9th graders were floundering academically and socially.

The class of 130 freshmen had a collective 273 Fs in their classes. And the stakes were high—grades and attendance during students’ freshman year are critical indicators of on-time graduation. Studies have found that when freshmen are disengaged, missing school, and failing classes, they’re more likely to drop out or not graduate in four years.

Oregon’s principal at the time enlisted Kimberly Radostits, a Spanish teacher at the school, to help find a solution. She put together a small group of educators to pilot an after-school program where struggling freshmen students could receive support, guidance, and connection.

In just a couple years, the school started to see indicators that the program—named Hawks Take Flight, after the school’s mascot—was working. The school’s on-time graduation rate was increasing, and student attendance had improved.

“Many of those students didn’t really need homework help,” said Radostits, who is now the Illinois Teacher of the Year and a finalist for the national award. “What they needed was just an adult who believed in them.”

That’s the power of mentoring. Research shows that when students have an adult in their school building who they can trust, they have better attendance, better grades, higher test scores, a sense of belonging and connectedness at school, and belief in themselves as learners.

Each year, Oregon identifies the 15 percent of the freshmen class that is most at-risk for not graduating, according to early indicators from middle school. For example, educators will look at absences, missing work, and even the number of visits to the nurse’s office to see if students are going to school but missing copious amounts of class time.

Then, educators will meet with the students’ parents to explain the program and its benefits. The decision to be a part of the program is ultimately left up to students and their parents, but most participate.

“That is why it’s successful: No one is forced to be in it,” said Heidi Deininger, who is in her fifth year as Oregon’s principal.

By 2019-20, the number of failing grades in the freshmen class had dropped to 16. When the program was scaled back in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years due to the pandemic, it didn’t yield the same results, Deininger said, adding that it’s back to normal this year: “It works best when it’s in its truest form.”

Students get both academic and social-emotional support

This year, seven educators—teachers, school counselors, and a paraprofessional—meet with 17 students every Wednesday after school. They talk as a group as well as one-on-one (each adult has about two students as mentees). Mentees are encouraged to contact their mentors outside of the designated program time, too, and Radostits said students will confide in their mentors about personal problems, as well as academic ones.

Caelyn Langley, 17, went through Hawks Take Flight as a freshman. She had struggled in middle school, and she didn’t expect to do well in high school—but the educators in the program pushed her to keep on top of her assignments and put effort into her work. She ended up doing well in her classes and is now a senior, with plans to pursue a degree in psychology at Loyola University Chicago in the fall.

Having a supportive relationship with a teacher—in her case, Radostits—was key, Caelyn said. She has stayed connected with Radostits throughout her time at Oregon, sometimes stopping by her classroom for an hour after school, just to chat.

“Someone who means something to you is telling you that you can do it and is pushing you to do your best,” Caelyn said. “Mrs. Rad was the first teacher I’ve had a relationship like that with. She really gave me advice and helped me figure stuff out.”

Many of those students didn’t really need homework help. What they needed was just an adult who believed in them.

Kimberly Radostits, a Spanish teacher at Oregon Junior/Senior High School

At one point during her freshman year, Caelyn had a loss in her family. “Mrs. Rad called me and really comforted me,” she said. “It was one of the best things I’ve had happen to me, teacher-wise.”

Each week, the mentors with Hawks Take Flight will help students set an academic goal and a social-emotional goal, which could be something like having a conversation with the cheerleading coach about tryouts or sitting with a different group of people during lunch if they’re having trouble with their friend group.

Pipkin, 18, like more than 40 other rising juniors in Mississippi’s New Albany school district, received $8.50 an hour for 100 hours of work at her internship, which was built on top of a high school course. But she got much more than money out of the program: The experience helped confirm her longtime hunch that she’d enjoy a career in nursing.

New Albany’s internship program—which about a third of juniors participate in—represents the culmination of a districtwide push to get students envisioning themselves in the workplace. It starts in elementary school, where students might dress up as a person working in a career that interests them, and continues in middle school, with field trips to nearby employers.

The internship experience has been “life changing” for some of the district’s students, particularly those who come from low-income families, said Beth Benson, New Albany’s workforce and development coordinator and career coach.

“A lot of these kids don’t have parents who went to college or don’t even have parents who go to work every day,” Benson said. “They’ve never seen what it is like to go into work every day and make money for your family and feel a sense of fulfillment.”

The district has had a range of placements. Wannabe engineers have interned with a nearby branch of the Army Corps of Engineers. And one student intrigued by social media marketing put what he learned at his internship to almost immediate use. He started his own company and now helps raise the social profile of people in the music industry, all without having to move out of New Albany.

Students can ‘see for themselves’ why school matters

Arranging for so many students to get paid for a work-based learning experience—as New Albany has done—isn’t typical.

But career exploration in general has become a common high school mission. Districts around the country offer students a choice of pathways to focus their education around: from communication, to public leadership, to agricultural engineering, to computer science, to artificial intelligence.

Educators like New Albany’s superintendent, Lance Evans, who first envisioned the internship program, rattle off the benefits of the approach. Students can check out a field before spending tens of thousands of dollars in college tuition on a degree in something that’s not right for them. They may be exposed to work in an area they never would have considered. Local businesses can find employees who have been learning on the job since their teenage years. School becomes more relevant.

“They begin to see, ‘well, this is why I have to take these courses,’” Evans said. “‘This is why I have to go through this process.’”

Getting students excited about and invested in their classes is reason enough on its own to go big on work-based learning, experts say.

“At a high level, workplace learning is an even better opportunity than in-class learning to start thinking about the real-world” applications of skills like problem solving and communication, said Charlotte Cahill, a senior director at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that concentrates on education and workforce alignment.

“It’s one thing for your teacher to tell you something,” Cahill said. “It’s another thing to see it for yourself. Work-based learning gives students an opportunity to make those connections for themselves in a way that can be really engaging.”

Educators appear to agree.

When asked for the most effective strategies for jump starting students’ motivation, more than half of educators—54 percent—cited hands-on opportunities, including internships, according to a survey of 1,058 teachers, principals, and district leaders conducted in late January and early February by the EdWeek Research Center, making it the most popular answer. The second most popular response, chosen by 45 percent of educators? Showing students how they can use what they learn in future careers.

Dog surgeries, new babies, and learning to tattoo

Flourish logoA Flourish chart

What’s more, 70 percent of teens surveyed who had some experience with career-and-technical education classes said they found them more engaging and relevant than their other courses.

In New Albany, even students who don’t opt for the district’s 100-hour internship receive some work-based learning. For instance, every junior is allowed the chance to spend at least one day shadowing a professional working in a field they are interested in.

That relatively short stint has yielded some eye-opening experiences, Benson said. A would-be labor and delivery nurse watched four babies come into the world. A student interested in working in a veterinary practice witnessed half a dozen dog surgeries. And a prospective tattoo artist got to practice on fake skin.

Students may be even bigger believers in career exploration as an engagement tool than their teachers and school school leaders. An overwhelming majority—87 percent—of students said that they feel more motivated in class when they see a direct connection between what they are learning and the skills they would use in a job or career, according to a separate EdWeek Research Center survey of 1,011 teenagers in late December and early January.

There are other kinds of success stories. One 11th grader who was “gung-ho” about the idea of becoming a social worker changed her mind after just one day shadowing staff at a local agency, Benson said. That was a win in Benson’s book because now the student won’t spend four years of college majoring in a field just to find out it’s not a fit.

Benson has also seen the internships invigorate students who aren’t especially invested in academics. One student “wouldn’t pay a lick of attention to what I was saying” in class, she recalled, because he was too busy watching videos of machines moving dirt on his tablet.