Arushi Sharma | Grown-up lessons in middle school

Twelve-year-olds don't care about college, nor should they have to.

This thought crossed my mind as I scanned a recent e-mail from Penn's Volunteers In Public Service mentoring program. The e-mail invited me to help seventh graders at Shaw Middle School "explore careers and gain exposure to a University setting."

I shook my head in disbelief. If someone approached my 12-year-old self with college advice I'd freak and make a run for it. The program sounded illogical.

Penn's VIPS mentor program guides 15 to 20 children annually. Participants are selected on the basis of their behavioral and academic performance at school. The students come to campus weekly to meet with Penn mentors and attend educational events to learn about what it's like to be in college and how they can get there.

I spoke with Rona Schwartz, who has had a mentoring role at Shaw Middle School for 17 years. She said that while formal college-centric programs at Shaw have been around for five or six years, the school has always discussed the importance of a college degree and other career issues with the middle schoolers. The goal, she said, is to "motivate students who don't know what's out there."

When I told Schwartz about my doubts on targeting 12-year-olds for college prep, she reasoned that middle school was a good age range because kids are "not sure what they want" and are more receptive to "new ideas and avenues of exploration."

Isabel Sampson-Mapp, associate director of the VIPS program, said she specifically enjoyed working with sixth graders because they "were a little wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, not quite as jaded as the 8th graders."

Aww. But I still couldn't fathom what good it does to have wide-eyed and bushy-tailed critters learn about financial aid. Even ninth grade sounded like a better group to target. But I soon found out that the mentoring program's focus was well founded.

A Johns Hopkins University study, "Unfulfilled Promises: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia's Dropout Crisis, 2000-2005," indicated that we need to "get them young."

The report found that 80 percent of the students who drop out of Philadelphia high schools were either at-risk eighth graders or at-risk ninth graders. At this age, 13-14, children developed poor behavioral and academic attitudes that only got worse with time.

Robert Carter, a Penn mentor and associate director at the African American Resource Center, added that "because of how fast kids grow up in this culture, we're starting to see that older students have pre-made biases and difficulties." This precludes their intellectual drive to even finish high school.

Presenting college as a positive, exciting opportunity to young children thus has a significant impact. It increases the likelihood that they will gain the confidence and enthusiasm to continue education through high school and into college.

At this point, I started thinking about what gave me the intellectual drive to go to college. A combination of factors, including family, school counselors and societal norms helped me internalize the value of a college education.

I didn't need encouragement to think independently about college in seventh grade - starting in ninth grade, an automatic support network kicked in. I just needed the grades and the essays.

Afi Roberson-Heywood, staff assistant at the African American Resource Center and a Penn mentor, emphasized that the very lack of such a support network makes external mentoring imperative for Philadelphia's students.

Mentoring is an awakening for kids because they aren't getting the confidence boost from traditional quarters: The high school counseling system is inadequate, parents often do not set a college precedent or are worried about kids simply finishing high school and, as Mapp said, children here don't "look out their window and see people going to college."

Mapps' words hit home. When I looked outside my window as a child, there were Georgetown University students walking around. My grandparents, parents, friends, neighbors, everyone went to college. I grew up thinking college was my only option.

Enlightened and humbled by the realization that my childhood was incredibly blessed, I now wholeheartedly endorse college mentoring for kids. In fact, I want to see school-wide programs that present college opportunities to all middle schoolers in Philadelphia, not just a select group of high performers.

I was also well assured that the program isn't turning kiddies into premature nerds overnight. Mapp, Heywood and Carter all confirm that the kids' favorite part of the mentoring program is lunch at a Penn dining hall.

Arushi Sharma is an College junior from Rockville, Md. Her e-mail address is sharma@dailypennsylvanian.com. A Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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