Mentoring program shows seventh graders professional life at Penn

This year, a new group of West Philadelphia youth will get a taste of life at Penn.

The Penn Workplace Mentoring Program, which is sponsored by Penn Volunteers in Public Service at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, will bring 20 seventh graders to campus once a month and give them an inside look into the careers of Penn administrators.

The program, which began in 1993, pairs 20 students from the Mastery Charter School’s Shoemaker Campus in West Philadelphia with their own staff or faculty mentor from Penn.

Instead of sitting through math, science and English classes, students will spend time at their mentor’s workplace, explore Penn’s campus and participate in a group discussion and lunch every third Thursday of the month.

Selected students must be willing to attend three hours of tutoring after school to make up for their missed day of class.

“We look for students who would be willing to put in that extra effort,” said Sharif El-Mekki, principal of the Mastery Charter School’s Shoemaker Campus. “It’s not a free day pass, it’s an extra responsibility.”

Students who participate in the program have shown improvement in classes, attendance and leadership, El-Mekki added.

Netter Center Associate Director Isabel Mapp stressed the importance of sharing Penn’s resources with West Philadelphia residents.

“That’s the key to making a difference in the lives of the children and the surrounding community,” she said.

However, the program strictly forbids mentors and mentees from carrying on informal interaction outside its boundaries. Students meet with their mentors between October and May, after which the pairing ends.

“Students would like for the program to last longer,” Mapp admitted. The goal of the program, however, is to “encourage good relationships with adults” and let students know that “there are caring adults that will work with them and help them to accomplish their goals.”

“I think it’s a great policy, “ said Robert Carter, associate director of the African-American Resource Center. Carter has been participating as a mentor for the past five years. He explained that the parameters of the program are laid out during the first meeting so that both students and mentors understand the workplace-only policy.

“We enjoy each other in the moment,” he said.

Netter Center Assistant Director Rita Hodges acknowledged the difficulty of ending mentor-mentee interactions.

“You’re naturally inclined to want to follow up with them and help make sure that they’re on track,” she said. “Hopefully it’s the start of them having a positive role model and learning how to seek out those people in their lives.”

El-Mekki stressed that mentors were not abandoning the students. “A year is a journey. Students are walking into this relationship understanding that this is another layer of support for this year.”

Despite the often large age difference between mentors and mentees, students are able to relate to and confide in their mentors.

Carter recalls taking one of his mentees, who hoped to become captain of his community basketball team, to practice dribbling at the gym. He shared his own story of getting cut from the basketball team decades earlier. During their next meeting, his mentee came back to tell him he had made the winning basket at his last game.

“It just made me feel really good to be able to share that story. It’s important for adults to share with young people times that they were vulnerable,” Carter said.

“There’s always a way to find some common ground and bridge the age gap,” Hodges agreed.

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