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.