The Humanities mentor program was a program started by Sophomores Kennedy Robinson and Alison Wang. Implemented in the 2018-2019 school year, the purpose of this program was to provide resources and support for Humanities freshman in order to combat the stressful nature of the program. This year, AP US History was added to the Humanities curriculum, and AP NSL is being bumped down to a Freshman Class and in a study done by The University of Florida, AP courses were found to increase stress of students.

The program was voluntary for seniors. They were given a form at the end of the 2017-2018 school year and filled it out if they were interested in being a mentor for the incoming freshman class. The Seniors were then matched with one or two freshman to mentor. The students were provided with each other’s contact information, but it was largely up to the Seniors and the Freshmen to actually establish contact.

Founder Kennedy Robinson states, “Because we forgot to include a section for the incoming freshmen to list their contact info, we were unable to give the mentors an easy way to contact their mentees. This lead to delay and scheduling —many people had to wait weeks to meet their mentee — and many mentors were not able to reach their mentees at the school email we provided!” However, there was a Meet your Mentor meeting on October 29th to resolve this issue.

A study done by IssueLab Knowledge Center found that school-based mentoring programs positively impact school-related attitudes, performance, and behavior.

Humanities Senior, Calley Mullin states,”I definitely think I could have benefited from a program like this when I was a freshman.”

Global Sophomore Kijani Derenoncourt says, “We should have a Global program like this, it could be really helpful.”

However, one Humanities Senior who asked not to be named said they feel as if, “ There is no structure to it [the mentor program] so it is hard to really establish a helpful relationship [with the mentee]  unless the mentee is really assertive, [which is] often not the case, as it is their first year in high school.”

The Science Math Computer Science (SMCS) program has a mentor program as well, but it did not directly influence the creation of the Humanities Mentor program.