The freshman mentor program provides students with unique opportunities. Through the program, seniors are able to help freshmen transform into resposible high school students while improving their own leadership skills.
Counselor Gina Fajardo is the sponsor of the program. Fajardo did not create the program, but formalized it.
Fajardo created the motto “Freshman Year Counts” because she wanted kids to realize that their entire high school career counts, not just the junior and senior years.
This year, she supplied mentors with T-shirts and created mandatory meetings for them.
“The mentors teach freshmen how to set smart goals, create good study habits and how to prevent bullying,” Fajardo said.
“It’s a selective process to choose who is a mentor,” Fajardo said.
Fajardo meets with each prospective senior mentor individually and also with the their teachers, so she has an idea of who the students are academically and how they behave around others.
Melissa E, a senior mentor, joined the program because her younger brother was “clueless” going into freshman year, and she wanted to help make the transition easier for him and for his class.
“Now that my youngest brother is in high school I figured, why not just help him but his class,” E said.
The Freshmen Mentors program has developed over the past few years.
“When I was a freshman, we didn’t have learn meetings,” mentor Emily Holmes, senior, said. “We had to eat lunch at a certain table with a mentor every day for the first week of school.”
With the current program, the organization and set-up of the system helps to foster better relationships between the freshmen students and the mentors.
“[In the past few years] it was a lot less organized. I’m a mentor because I didn’t want freshmen to be like me, knowing nothing,” Holmes said.