Hamilton Heights High School will offer a community mentoring pilot program beginning this fall. The school corporation has entered into an agreement with Atlanta, Ga.-based Teach One to Lead One ® (T1L1).
The mentoring program is a unique collaboration between the school and local community mentors who lead students weekly in an interactive curriculum that teaches 10 principles that are essential to life. Hamilton Heights is the first T1L1 mentoring program in Indiana.
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, drop-outs and worse. 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 program is active in six states and two countries outside the U.S. It 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.
Hamilton Heights Assistant Principal Whitney Gray has taken the lead on implementing the T1L1 program in the high school.
“We are excited to see the impact this mentoring program has with our students,” said Gray of this new school/community partnership. “This is a great way for the school and the community to work together for the good of our kids.”
The pilot program will focus on a group of freshmen and sophomores during the 2019-2020 school year.
For more information on Teach One to Lead One, visit T1L1.org.