Eliza Luxbacher, a senior, and Mary Cugini, a junior, worked in conjunction with Mrs. Jennifer Kirk, High School Guidance Curriculum Leader, Mr. Thomas Marquis, School Counselor, and Mr. Michael Funfar, Mentor Program Sponsor, to develop a mentoring program for students at Fort Couch Middle School that will launch in February 2015. The young women and the counselors modeled the program after Upper St. Clair High School’s Mentoring Program, which eases students’ transition as they move from middle school to high school.
Both Luxbacher and Cugini joined the Mentoring Program during their sophomore years. They hope their new program will help the rising freshmen feel more confident about their transition. Luxbacher says, “I think receiving advice from current high school students who have survived freshmen year will make a world of difference for [the eighth graders].”
The program at Fort Couch will start with surveys that the counselors will distribute to the eighth graders toward the end of January. Luxbacher and Cugini as well as the other ten high school students who have worked on the program plan to use the survey results to prepare specific presentations for the eighth graders. Luxbacher says that she and her peers have presently designed discussions about clubs, schedules, and common misconceptions. However, they want to review the results from the surveys because the eighth graders’ concerns “tend to vary from year to year.”
Once the mentors finalize their presentations, they will visit the students at Fort Couch once or twice a month for the remainder of the school year. They have also created an email account that the rising freshmen can send their questions to throughout the summer. Luxbacher says these developments will benefit the rising freshmen because they “will know some juniors and seniors who they will feel comfortable with on the first day of school.”
During their first few months as high school students, the freshmen will continue to receive support through the USCHS Mentoring Program. As a part of the program, 60 juniors visit designated freshmen homerooms every Thursday to respond to questions and serve as guides. Mrs. Kirk says these visits have helped strengthen the “transition from the middle school to the high school” and mend the “gap” that rises both “academically and socially” between eighth graders and ninth graders.
While the mentors who will visit Fort Couch this spring consist of a small group of juniors and seniors, sophomores who would like to participate in the USCHS Mentoring Program can apply by submitting a form and two teacher recommendations to the counseling office in April 2015. If chosen to participate, students will attend the Outdoor Odyssey Leadership Academy in Boswell, Pa., in May 2015.
Mrs. Kirk says the Counseling Department also holds “a bullying prevention program with [the eight graders] where [our students perform] skits to emulate bullying.” The skit from last year focused on the dangers of various social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.
Whether participating in the new mentoring program, the old mentoring program, or the bullying prevention program, students and faculty members at USCHS dedicate themselves to helping their students feel secure and welcome. Luxbacher certainly speaks for all of them when she says, “We love what we do.”