Peer Mentoring Senior Year

This year started off really well, with the Peer Mentors getting very involved with the freshmen early on. For the first time I believe they actually take us seriously. I have four mentees assigned to me. This system works so that we can break up into small groups with each peer mentor having ~3 or 4 freshmen. This way, the freshmen don't feel like we're all talking to them, but are more willing to engage in a small group discussion. The meetings we have been having have gone very well so far, and I'm confident that next year's seniors will be able to take over from us smoothly.
This past year we have had several meetings with the freshmen and attended weekly meetings with Ms. Escobar. Back in December, Ms. Escobar brought some students to her house from the SYA (student year abroad) program in Viterbo. These were all American students who belonged to the Peer Mentoring program Ms Escobar runs in Viterbo.
While the SYA students were in Rome, Ms Escobar invited all the St. Stephens mentors over to her house to have a 'retreat'. We engaged in role plays, did research on a certain mental illness and presented it to the group, and were able to learn a lot about the American students' perspective on mentoring.
As their school has only about 20 students all in junior year, they are used to mentoring their own friends and people their own age. As we mainly mentor freshmen and sophomores, it was interesting to learn about their experiences mentoring students their own age.

I was a co-founder of peer mentoring back in freshman year, and I have been a part of it ever since. It will be very strange for me to leave next year and imagine the program continuing on without any of this years seniors and founders participating. However each year the prestige of Peer Mentoring increases, and students have begun to take us seriously. I know that Peer Mentoring will continue gaining influence among the student body in the next years.

Peer Mentoring

Since freshman year I have been involved in Peer Mentoring. It has enabled me to work in group discussions and encourage others to do the same. I was chosen to be the liaison between the group and our faculty supervisor. This position requires a lot more commitment and dedication. I have to take notes during each session (we meet each Monday) and then type them up and send them to our supervisor. I also have to pass messages along from the group to the supervisor and vice versa. I have to make sure to keep everyone in the loop in regards to what we are all doing with the program.
This year has been very successful for Peer Mentoring so far. We have already had a 'heath day' with the freshmen. There are about 12 PM's and we broke up the freshmen into 6 groups. We introduced topics and tried to get a feel for the problems and stress they are all feeling. We got very positive feedback from both the dean of students as well as numerous freshmen. Another day like this is being planned and hopefully it will be just as successful.
We have also recently given each freshman a designated PM to talk to. Since they seem to be hesitant to just approach us, we hoped that by giving them an assignment it would take off some of the pressure. I have four freshmen and two have already come up to me, so I feel that it is going quite well.

Some other PM events are coming up. On March 21st 4 PM's will be going up to Viterbo with our faculty supervisor to train students our age to be Peer Mentors. I am going, and I'm very excited to see how their program is similar to ours. On March 28th there is a conference run by our faculty supervisor at Ambrit(a school in rome). We will be answering parents questions about our program and how we deal with different situations that we are presented with. I am also quite excited for that.