Lucretia Brown
Published: December 7, 2005
After four years, the Adopt-A-School Mentoring Program is back at PJC in full force, according to Student Service’s Specialist Lynne Butcher.
Adopt-A-School Mentoring Program is under the Educational Talent Search program. This is a program that is federally funded and has been in existence for 20 years. It is designed to provide guidance to students in middle school and high school who have the potential to further their education by going to college. Even though Educational Talent Search has been around for 20-years, the Adopt-A-School Mentoring Program is fairly new. However, the program at PJC is only servicing middle-school age students.
Educational Talent Search specialists visit each school on a regular basis and work with the cooperation with the staff at the school. Butcher is one of these specialists.
Butcher is seeking volunteers to assist her at the various schools she works with. Each volunteer must be a full-time faculty or staff member at Pensacola Junior College.
“I want the volunteers to know they don’t have to prepare anything,” Butcher said.
All they are really required to do is come to the school that is convenient for them and interact with the students and answer any questions the students may have.
“I usually ask the students to ask questions,” Butcher said.
Mary Betanzes, 47, is a volunteer for the program. One of the reasons she got involved in the Adopt-A-School Mentoring Program is because some of the schools are in Santa Rosa County. After one visit at King Middle School, in Milton, she found that she loves her work as a volunteer with the program.
“I don’t plan to stop for any reason,” Betanzes said.
Where most people think of mentoring as taking a couple of children to a ball game or to the movies once or twice a week, this is a program to encourage students to go to college when they get out of high school. Butcher has a set of lesson plans. All the volunteer does is come in and takes part in the lesson for that day. The lessons include test-taking skills, career preparation, self esteem and study skills. All of the lessons are age appropriate.
“At first I thought it was going to be a typical career assessment where there are five or six pages and you have to fill out all the bubbles. But when I looked at what the children had, it had something that was really geared to middle school students. It was colorful bright and easy to read and easy to understand,” Betanzes said.
There are about 10 students in one group and each session lasts about 20 minutes and it is the same lesson, according to Butcher.
The Adopt-A-School Mentoring Program does not take just any middle-school-aged student. This is a program for first generation children who might be thinking about going to college, they are often from low income families and there are even some disabled students.
“We don’t discriminate,” Butcher said.
The volunteers answer questions about their own careers and even about PJC. Students who are lucky enough to interact with a PJC employee say that PJC is a good college to attend. Studies have shown that there is a 75 percent rate of students who attend college after high school.
There are 12 different middle schools that Butcher goes to. These schools include, Workman, Ferry Pass, Wedgewood, Brentwood, Ransom, Bellview, Brownsville, Brown Barge and Warrington, all in Escambia County. The schools in Santa Rosa County include, King, Hobbs and Avalon middle schools.
All potential volunteers must have a background check.
“I don’t want the background checks to discourage employees from wanting to volunteer,” Butcher said.
The volunteers get just as much out of the workshops as the students do.
“Working with them, I’ve learned so much and see so much. It’s fun to see them smile,” Betanzes said.