Mentoring Matters

"Mentoring Matters is an excellent addition to the growing body of hands-on resources for student mentoring and student advisory programs. The ready-to-use lessons will help any school get their advisory program off the ground with meaningful and engaging activities. The activities and scenarios are easy to execute and spot-on: respect, community-building, leadership skills, communicating, goal-setting, decision making, and adapting to change. Any school that wants to help its students negotiate the garmented and impersonal structure known as high school and help kids make meaning out of their school experience will find this book to be a valuable start-up tool."---Scott Brown, PhD, secondary school consultant

"As a board president, I believe that Mentoring Matters is a must-have resource for any school system committed to providing their students the skills of school-based mentoring. As a high school social worker, I believe that every student needs to establish a strong connection with a positive adult role model. This book provides the actual lessons required to prepare staff to be that mentor while establishing methods that personalize the learning environment to ensure the fostering of positive relationships between students and staff."---Mark A. Hughes, MSW, board of education president and high school social worker

"The policy impacts of school-based mentoring are all positive when implementation is facilitated through tools like Mentoring Matters. This handbook will help guarantee eager buy-in from all educators."---Thomas P. Gaffey, Connecticut state senator and chairman of the education committee

"Providing students with time for mentoring was easy; however, providing teachers with lesson plans was difficult. We have researched mentoring lesson plans to no avail. High school administrators and advisory mentors have been looking for simple, easy-to-implement lessons that provide students with topics of interest. This book will be a valuable tool for all high schools that have mentoring programs."---Donna Adduci MIK, high school principal

"Mark D. Benigni and Sheryll Petrosky get to the heart of what it takes to improve school climate. This book is a great `how-to' manual for implementing a program to personalize the high school experience for all students by building real connections among students and staff through a carefully crafted set of experiences."---Jerald P. Fine, district-wide positive behavior intervention support coach

"This is a tool that every teacher in every school should be using!"---Maureen Moylan, nontraditional educational training program director

Mark D. Benigni, EdD, is the superintendent of the Meriden Public School System and a former four-term mayor of Meriden, Connecticut. He was presented with one of the ten Outstanding Young Americans Awards by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 2008.
Sheryll Petrosky is a thirty-two-year veteran math teacher and mentor program director of the Cromwell Public School System in Cromwell, Connecticut. She is a graduate of Central Connecticut State University with a BA in mathematics and an MA in curriculum, supervision, and administration.