National Mentoring Month continues

1/27/2023

[Our National Mentoring Month Week 3 got delayed because we were too busy working at mentoring!]

Up until this fall, Oakland Serves has always worked with individual schools, like Oakland High School (see our story about them here) and Dewey (and here) to identify students that would benefit from 1:1 mentoring. Our story this week is about another mentoring project we are working on to support an OUSD program initiated in 2022.

Credit recovery classes at Castlemont, Fremont and McClymonds High Schools

OUSD’s Central Academic Recovery (CAR) team is dedicated to creating student-centered & restorative academic recovery models for 9th and 10th graders in OUSD. One of their key concerns is the large number of high school students who fell behind during the pandemic and did not acquire the credits that they normally would have in that school year. By the end of their senior year, they will not have sufficient credits to graduate with their peers. The CAR team asked Oakland Serves to help with their academic recovery classes and sessions that are designed to help students pass or re-take classes to gain the needed credits.

For this we provide classroom mentors at both Castlemont and McClymonds for small math and history classes set up by the CAR team. Quickly recruiting enough mentors for this new project was challenging but we now have a new wave of Oakland mentors: parents, young professionals, students and retirees who are each making a space in their day to help a student towards graduation. Sue, a retired chemist, has been helping in the math recovery classes. As she puts it “I enjoy working with kids of this age and I learn alot about their challenges. Teenagers are often not an easy age group but it is important that their futures are not derailed by poor decisions made in high school.”

The CAR program needs more mentors for the summer semester and Oakland Serves recruits mentors throughout the year.

Consider volunteering for Oakland Serves or if you just want to know more about the mentoring programs, sign up to attend an upcoming information meeting. Although our volunteers are donating their time, we have overhead expenses to recruit, train, place and support them. Consider donating to help us continue to provide this service to Oakland students .

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