Cross-Age Mentoring Program (CAMP)

CROSS-AGE MENTORING PROGRAM (CAMP)

OVERVIEW

The Cross-Age Mentoring Program is designed to keep children connected with school and family by assigning them an older youth as a mentor. Mentors and mentees meet after school twice a week for about six months. In this evaluation children were randomly assigned to the mentee/treatment group or the control group. Mentor attendance was found to be significantly related to mentees’ rule compliance, social skills, overall social skills and school competence, overall self-esteem, self-esteem appearance, and ~~total~~ connectedness; mentee attendance in the program was not significantly related to any variables. Participation in the program had no significant effect on mentees’ school-connectedness.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target Population: Children in 4^th through 8^th grade

Mentees and mentors meet twice a week after school for two hours at the middle school (4^th-8^thgrades. Mentors and mentees rank their choices of pairings following a six-hour orientation, and 90% of mentees receive their first or second choice.

Mentors meet with supervisors once a month to review the mentor’s role, appropriate boundaries for the relationship, commitment to the program, and the connectedness curricula. Parents of mentees receive ideas for activities to do with their children, and attend bi-monthly events on Saturdays. Program coordinators schedule meetings between mentors and mentees. The program includes six months of mentoring, which amounts to 48 meetings, plus six Saturday meetings, totaling 144 hours.

The Saturday meetings are used for trips to the zoo, picnic at a park, a carnival at the school, and other, similar activities.

In the other sessions, the mentors and mentees participate in activities to foster mentees’ connectedness to others, to self, to school, and to reading. If a mentor or mentee is absent, his or her partner can still be involved with others in the program in some way. The children in this study interviewed teachers, and they role-played “moral dilemma” stories with their mentors after school. The mentees planned a teacher interview, practiced with their mentors, interviewed a teacher, and made a poster and wrote a story about the teacher, which they presented to the others in the program. The mentors and mentees also read eight short books and role-played alternative endings.

EVALUATIONS OF PROGRAM

Karcher, M. J. (2005). The Effects of Developmental Mentoring and High School Mentors' Attendance on their Younger Mentees' Self-Esteem, Social Skills, and Connectedness. Psychology in the Schools, 42(1), 65-77.

Evaluated Population: 77 4^th through 8^th graders categorized as either high risk or low risk (see below). 17 of the original 33 mentees were high-risk, but five high-risk children left the program. Of the original 33, 21 were male and 12 were female. The five who left were boys.

Forty children were originally assigned to the control group, but 10 were either absent at one of the two assessments or withdrew from the project. In the end, 58 children had complete data and were included in the sample. The treatment group had 17 high-risk and 16 low-risk children.

Most mentors were high school students , but 6 were in 8^th grade. The number of 9th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders were 7, 8, 9, and 6, respectively. Nearly all the mentors were white. Two mentors were from a minority racial/ethnic group: one was biracial and the other Hispanic.

Approach: The authors attempted to find equal numbers of high-risk and low-risk children to be randomly assigned. In all, 77 children were randomly assigned to either the mentoring group or the control group. The control group completed a tutoring program that began after the mentoring program ended.

To identify high-risk children, the authors administered questionnaires to the child’s teacher. The questionnaire measured three domains: family risk, academic risk, and behavior risk. The authors also measured self-esteem, social skills and school competence, attendance of the program, and involvement with parents, friends, school, and reading.

Results: Mentor attendance had a significantly greater impact on mentee outcomes than did mentee attendance. Mentor attendance was significantly related to positive changes in the following outcomes: rule compliance, social skills, and the entire social and school competence measure. Mentor attendance was positively related to mentees’ feelings about their appearance and global self-worth, but not with mentees’ self-esteem. Mentor attendance was also significantly related to positive change in mentees’ total connectedness related, but not with changes in parent connectedness or school connectedness separately.

Mentor attendance, controlling for mentee attendance, was also significantly related to mentees’ social skills, the composite of mentees’ social skills and school competence, mentees’ self-esteem, and the attractiveness component of self-esteem.

A test of variables that might influence post-treatment connectedness to school showed that only membership in the control group, and pretest connectedness to school, were significant predictors, after controlling for academic risk status, mentee attendance, mentor attendance, rule compliance, social skills, and attractiveness (part of the self-esteem measure).

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Website: http://cepahe.utsa.edu/Faculty&Staff/infocard/Michael_Karcher.htm

References:

SUMMARY & CATEGORIZATION

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: 10-14

Program components: child care/early childhood education, mentoring/tutoring, school-based, parent or family component

Measured outcomes: social/emotional, life skills

KEYWORDS: Children (3-11), Adolescence (12-17), High-Risk, School-based, Life Skills Training, School Engagement, Mentoring, Middle School, Self-Esteem.

Program information last updated 11/5/10

		© Child Trends 2004