By Richard Caines

SALISBURY — A mentoring program within Wicomico County Public Schools designed to keep students on the path of success needs volunteers.

The Wicomico Mentoring Program, established in 1994, brings adults into school facilities during the day to meet with students and build relationships. During the interaction mentors assist students with homework, play educational games or just encourage them in life.

Co-coordinator and Pupil Personnel Worker James Hesen told the Salisbury City Council during an April 1 presentation that the program was a brainchild of Henrietta Parker, but in the past several years it went through some transitions, especially during the pandemic.

“My colleagues and I inherited the project at the beginning of this past school year, and we have been working diligently to rebuild over the last few years what we kind of lost during the pandemic,” Hesen said.

Hesen told the city council there are currently 16,400 students enrolled in Wicomico County Public Schools and they have roughly 3,000 staff members. He said they started with nearly 70 students enrolled in the mentoring program at the beginning of the school year, but that has since expanded to 128 students across the district.

But he said they are doing that with 52 mentors who all volunteer their time trying to help students succeed not only in school but in life.

“Our mission and our vision are to bring mentors into our schools to work with our students who are in need of that additional support,” Hesen said. “They might not have support at home, they might not have hot meals at home and school is really the area where that place in that student’s life that brings some sort of normalcy into their void.”

Hesen asked the city council for their support in helping spread the word to their constituents. He said anyone in the community can become a mentor.

“Citywide, we are looking for mentors,” Hesen said. “It doesn’t matter where they’re from or what their background is. Now there are certain issues with the background. We make sure by looking through the background check that there aren’t any violent crimes, violent crimes against children or anything along those lines.”

Hesen said mentors who sign up and pass the background check come in for roughly an hour of training, whether that be basic knowledge in bloodborne pathogens or a minicourse in child abuse and neglect.

“The Wicomico Mentoring Project is very flexible,” Hesen said. “We only ask for about an hour of your time every week if you can give us that. If you can’t give us that and you can just give us some time, we’re looking for that too.”

Hesen told the city council that their greatest needs are in the middle schools and below, but mentors can pick the grade level they choose to volunteer at.

“There’s big push between second and third grade when students go from the primary level to the intermediate and then from intermediate to middle school,” Hesen said. “That’s where you see a lot of the requests coming in.”

Students who wish to be mentees in the program are required to get a permission slip signed by their parent or guardian.

Hesen said the program is working because they are seeing an increase in grades, overall performance in school and changes in behavior. He said the mentors also benefit from the program in many ways including gaining patience.

“This patience that I’ve learned is also ready good, but it’s also socialization for the mentors and the mentees and building a sense of community, which with the pandemic we’ve kind of lost that idea of community,” Hesen said. “We’re trying to bring people back into the schools to help our students. And it’s also important to start setting examples as a mentor.”

City Council Vice President Angela Blake said there was a public-led mentorship program in the city at one time in which city employees benefited if they volunteered.

“I think that we could go back and look at what we did historically and maybe just pick up from there because that was very successful,” Blake said.

Hesen said they have a goal of working with all 16,400 students in the school district and any help they can get from the community will be beneficial.

“Let them know that the school is on their side,” Hesen said. “We break down barriers, physical or other financial barriers, or homelessness and work with those families so those students can enjoy their education.”

Reach Managing Editor Richard Caines at rcaines@iniusa.org.