A Mentor’s Experience by Sarah Kownacki

When I first volunteered to e-mentor Adrianna, my first thought was “what are we going to talk about for 9 months?”  Adrianna didn’t like high school, didn’t care about her grades, and had little ambition to improve.  However, Adrianna told me that she wanted to be a nurse.  I tried to explain how much school, hard work, and good grades  would be required,  and encouraged Adrianna that she could easily do it with a little effort.  We e mailed about classes, grades, cheerleading and football, about teachers and attending extra study sessions, about her birthday, and within 1 or 2 e-mails it was easy to see all I needed to do was encourage her to study and ask about her grades and classes.  Sometimes I felt that just having someone to “share” her grades with helped Adrianna care more about them.  Before I knew it, we were sitting together at the End-of-Year Banquet and Adrianna was presented with the Award for the Most Improved Student.  I was so excited for her, and I was proud to hear that she passed every area of her TAKS tests!   She had also improved her grades by over 20 points in some subjects!  It was one of the most rewarding experiences I had all year and it only took about one e-mail a month.