Submitted
The first class of Hamilton Heights Teach One to Lead One® (T1L1) students recently graduated from the leadership mentoring program at the Remnant Coffee Shop in Arcadia. The students were each honored with a graduation certificate given to them by their mentors. This past year, 26 students took part in T1L1 mentoring at the high school.
T1L1 mentoring is a unique collaboration between the school and local community mentors who lead students weekly in an interactive curriculum. It teaches the students ten principles that are essential to life.
T1L1 was founded in 1996 by Dr. Lori Maldonado. It was her observation that children were lacking the basic life skills that they needed to become successful adults. This resulted in poor academic performance, truancy, discouragement, dropouts and worse. The results are evident in the breakdown of society.
The mentoring program is designed to help students engage with adults who show them how to develop the character they need to cope with life. The interaction between students and mentors has been credited with significantly raising academic performance, school attendance and changing the attitudes of the students to the positive. Most importantly, the program offers hope to students who are on the path to giving up on life.
“We were overwhelmingly pleased with the positive impact the mentors had on our students this past year,” Heights High School Assistant Principal Whitney Gray said. “You could see it on their faces during the graduation ceremony. They knew they had accomplished something and they had a room full of people who cared about them. That is huge!”
Hamilton Heights was the first school in Indiana to pilot a T1L1 program. Based in Atlanta, Ga., T1L1 is active in schools in seven states. You can learn more at T1L1.org.