Story Starters: Education Beyond the Classroom: Junior League

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Story Starters: Education Folder: Beyond the Classroom File

Lead: Mentoring program teaches more than just leadership skills to 7th grade girls.

Synopsis
In junior high many confident, well-adjusted girls may experience a negative change in self-concept. (Pipher, 1995). In so doing, they are at risk for eating disorders, suicide attempts, dropping out of school, teen pregnancy and violent behavior. Katrina Smith, a shy seventh-grader, has an increased chance of avoiding these pitfalls.

Katrina participates in "Exploring the Leader Within", a school-based program at the Boston Renaissance Charter School, which works to prevent this pattern by targeting a root of the problem: self-concept. The program encourages the development of leadership potential in seventh grade girls through pairings with adult women, called "muses". While a mentor helps youth experience mutual caring, trust and accountability with another person, a muse goes a step further by seeking to offer inspiration and to draw out the girls' creativity. Together the muse and the leadership program help girls "retain their voices" during the period from 7 to 14 when they may change and withdraw. This can give young girls the fundamentals they need to help them avoid risky behaviors and to prepare for a health, productive future.

The muses are addressing a matter of extreme importance. Well-known researcher Carol Gilligan has noted that girls seem to lose confidence in adolescence, and Stein et al (1998) have concluded that self-concept may play an important role in the early engagement in risky behaviors.

Katrina Smith was paired with Marybeth Kalafatas as her muse. Together they have worked to achieve two goals: how to be a leader in a group and how to create a personal definition of leadership. They also discuss such issues as violence and preventing violent behavior. Katrina enjoys the chance to spend time together with her friends who are also in the group, but more importantly, she realizes that it has helped her to speak up more and to feel more comfortable in a group. "She's grown a lot through this program," says Marybeth.

Program
Exploring the Leader Within
Center for Ventures in Girls' Education
Wellesley, Mass. 02181
781-237-3358

The Junior League of Boston's Exploring the Leader Within program at Boston Renaissance Charter School is one of a number of programs using this curriculum designed by the Center for Ventures in Girls' Education.

The Junior League sends eleven muses to work with fifteen to twenty girls at Boston Renaissance.

The Boston Renaissance Charter School offers grades K-8 and is the largest single-site charter school in the U.S. It delivers a program developed in partnership with the Edison Project. One of its stated non-academic goals for students is to develop character and values.

Goals of the Exploring the Leader Within curriculum include:

to help young adolescent girls recognize and create options for action by giving them a new way of looking at/thinking about situations
to give girls practice as leaders in a variety of situations
to help girls use their voices to bring about change
to empower girls to take up leadership positions, both with and without formal authority
to redefine what it means to be a leader, using a feminist model
to promote self-authorization by girls

Story Contact
Katrina Smith
Student participant in Exploring the Leader Within
Contact: Nancy Martland, Director of CFN
617-627-5314
Email: cfn@tufts.edu

Marybeth Kalafatas
Junior League volunteer and muse
Contact: Nancy Martland, Director of CFN
617-627-5314
Email: cfn@tufts.edu

Mary Lue Emmerson
Program Coordinator
Center for Ventures in Girls' Education
781-237-3358

Joann Stemmerman
Executive Director
Center for Ventures in Girls' Education
781-237-3358

Expert Contact
Lyn Mikel Brown, EdD
Co-chair, Education and Human Development
Colby College
4190 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901
207-872-3195
Email: lmbrown@colby.edu
relevant area: child and adolescent development and education, with a focus on girls.

Joann Stemmerman
Harvard Graduate School of Education
781-237-3358
relvant areas: girls' psychology and development; outdoor and experiential education

Background
Young people with mentors are 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs,
53% less likely to skip school,
33% less likely to hit someone,
than children without mentors.
Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America 1995 Impact Study
230 North 13th St. Philadelphia, PA 19107
212-576-7000
http://www.bbbsa.org

Young people who participated in an intergenerational mentoring project for high-risk middle school students, Across Ages, in Philadelphia exhibited:
less negative classroom behavior
better school attendance
improved relationships with adults and peers
positive changes in their knowledge, attitudes and behaviors concerning substance use and related life skills.
Center for Intergenerational Learning, Temple University
Suite 206-USB
1601 North Broad St.
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215-204-6970

High school students from families receiving public assistance who had a mentor were more likely than who did not to:
graduate from high school
enroll in college
be hopeful about their future
have fewer arrests
Quantum Opportunities Program, funded by the Ford Foundation (1989-91)
Contact: One-to-One/National Mentoring Partnership, 2801 M Street NW,
Washington, DC 20007, 202-338-3844

In a 1989 Louis Harris poll:
73% of students said their mentors helped raise their goals and expectations
59% of mentored students improved their grades
Contact: One to One/National Mentoring Partnership, 2801 M Street NW,
Washington, DC 20007, 202-338-3844

Mentoring as an intervention for at-risk teens is very popular despite conflicting evidence of its effectiveness. Research on a 4-year mentoring project developed specifically for African-American adolescents shows that no significant differences were found between control and intervention groups in terms of self-esteem, attitudes toward drugs and alcohol, grades, school attendance, and disciplinary problems. (Royse, David (1998). Mentoring high-risk minority youth: Evaluation of the Brothers project. Adolescence, 33 (129) 145-158.
References

Gilligan, Carol, (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Cambridge: Harvard University Press

LoSciuto, Leonard et al (1996) An Outcome Evaluation of Across Ages: An Intergenerational Mentoring Approach to Drug Prevention. Journal of Adolescent Research, vol 11, no 1, January, 1996 pp. 116-129.

Pipher, Mary (1994) Reviving Ophelia New York: Putnam

Stein, KF et al. (1998) Self-schemas and possible selves as predictors and outcomes of risky behaviors in adolescents. Nursing Research vol 47 no 2, pp96-106.

Web sites:

Girls Incorporated
A national non-profit organization that has provided informal educational programs for girls encouraging them to master intellectual, emotional and physical challenges for 52 years.
http://www.girlsinc.org

Girl Power
Sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services to encourage and empower 9-14 year old girls to make the most of their lives.
http://www.health.org/gpower

Related Coverage
"From Carol Gilligan's Chair" The New York Times, section 6, page 50, November 1997 by Norman Michael

"Preparing girls to be leaders: Programs help participants gain the confidence and self-esteem to speak up." Boston Globe, page D12, March 2, 1998. By Beth Daley.

Compiled by:
Christina Lembo and Sabrina Cimino

Posted:May 10, 1999
Updated: March 2, 2000