Mentors Make the Difference at Boys Town
Great strides by mentors and students at Wegner School and Boys Town High School earned the schools a national award from HOSTS Learning - the Mentoring and Intervention Best Practices Exemplary Program Award. The two Boys Town schools are part of only 52 total schools nationwide who received the award out of more than 500 eligible schools.
“Our students make great strides in their education because of the involvement of the mentors in our program,” said Bruce Haag, Boys Town Mentoring Coordinator. “Our mentors are made up of Boys Town employees, employees of companies near Home Campus and retired persons, all of whom are very dedicated to our mission and program.”
With the help of 90 mentors, Wegner students in the mentoring program saw big improvements in their reading. With an average grade level growth of 2.39 grade on reading assessments and a 19.7 percent gain on the reading diagnostic assessment, the almost 1,400 hours dedicated by mentors and students certainly paid off. At Boys Town High School, students who participated in the mentoring program had an average grade level growth of 1.41 years on the California Achievement Test and improved 8.5 percent on math placement inventory. These positive statistics are in response to the 57 mentors who volunteered 2,873 hours at the High School in the 2006 – 2007 school year.
“I am so appreciative of the mentors we have,” said Haag. “They do a super job and it’s just a joy to work with them and get to know them. They create a fun situation for us and for the students.”
Haag credits the mentoring program’s success to the communication between mentors, Family-Teachers and the Boys Town community.
“Communication is so vital and it’s what makes a lot of programs work here at Boys Town,” continued Haag. “Our district representative feels it, the North Central Accreditation team felt it, and we certainly feel it here.”
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