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Mentoring: Another way of being a friend
Editors note: This is the first in a series on the TeamMates Mentoring program at McCook Public Schools. In this segment, a mentor and mentee describe how their friendship developed.
McCOOK, Neb. — Six years ago, Annika Johnson moved to McCook with her family and was trying to navigate the often cut-throat social world of middle school.
Far from being an “at risk” kid, Johnson came from a loving, stable family and had good grades. But she kept hearing good things from other students about TeamMates and it “sounded like fun.” So she signed up.
“It was a safe place I could go to for an hour and just be me,” Johnson recalled. “I didn’t have to worry about someone judging me.”
Now a mid-term graduate this year from McCook High School and planning a mission trip in the near future, Johnson still meets with her TeamMate mentor once a week, Sara Rippen, only now it’s at a local coffee shop instead of the school cafeteria.
“You never could have told me that this would turn out to be a long-term friendship,” Johnson said, who plans to attend college after returning from the mission trip. She said the Teammates program showed her that another adult besides those in her family could take a special interest in her, too.
“It made me feel special, that an adult wanted to spend time with me,” said Johnson, matched as a sophomore with Sara Rippen when her original mentor had to leave because of time constraints.
“When you think about it, one lunch hour a week isn’t a lot,” Rippen said. “You don’t have to be anyone specific to be a mentor, just someone willing to spend an hour a week with a kid. Everyone has their own qualities they can bring to the relationship.”
Rippen said she found that as a mentor, she didn’t have to take the role of a parent worrying about grades, or a counselor or tutor, but just someone who listened.
“It was another way of being a friend. And a great way to bridge the generation gap. You get so much more than you give,” she said.
TeamMates in McCook started this school year with 54 matches and are currently at 72, according to Janae Solomon, school counselor and McCook TeamMates director. The goal is 75 matches by the end of the school year. McCook TeamMates also includes St. Patrick Catholic School and other schools in Southwest Nebraska who have the program include Cambridge, Arapahoe and Imperial, with Wauneta-Palisade starting a program this fall.
Students can self-nominate themselves, such as Johnson, or be nominated by teachers, counselors or parents. The program begins at fourth grade and continues through 12th.
The program was originally founded in 1991 by Tom and Nancy Osborne in order to provide support and encouragement kids needed to graduate from high school and pursue post-secondary education, The program has grown to include Iowa, Kansas and Wyoming, providing mentors to over 7,500 students.
Mentors attend a one-time, two-hour training, where rules and philosophies behind the program are explained, such as no gifts are allowed to be exchanged and meetings must take place on school grounds. Students, or mentees, in the program also attend a short, 30-minute training about the program.
After parental permission is granted, Solomon matches mentors to mentees, looking for common interests and personality traits. Mentors are asked to meet with their mentees for at least 30 minutes a week, up to an hour a week.
It’s a mentee-focused program, Solomon said, so conversations center around what the student wants to talk about.
For Johnson, that meant she preferred intellectually stimulating conversations, she said, beyond the usual school chit-chat that revolved around boys or dances.
Not that girl talk was entirely off the table.
“My husband and I had three boys, so it was nice to be able to talk about girly things once in a while,” Rippen laughed.
For more information on becoming a mentor, call Solomon at (308)-344-4532.