School Year 2021-2022 Wrap Up: Updates from Lion’s Pride Mentoring
6/30/2022
The mission of Lion’s Pride Mentoring is to empower youth leaders to guide incoming freshmen to reach their fullest potential. Thanks to our amazing donors and school partners, we are able to bring this mission to life.
This school year, our students had an 88% attendance rate at a time when chronic absenteeism in Illinois has nearly doubled from 11% pre-pandemic to 21% in the last year! Just as our program provides mentorship to struggling ninth grade students, we are also able to bring students different opportunities, resources, and even a chance to intern with Lion’s Pride Mentoring.
“This is a program where you speak up, you make things happen, your words have volume.”
Earlier this month, our summer intern Sofia Davis, a former Lion’s Pride Mentoring Big herself, took some time to speak with those who have participated in the program. Sofia heard from fellow former participants about how the program has helped them to gain skills that they are applying in their everyday lives.
Student interviews are an integral part of our program evaluation process and provide another way for us to leverage student voice in our decision making. When interviewing Elias Ramirez, former Big at UIC College Prep, he stated, “The program taught me leadership skills in terms of communication.” He went on to share how this has helped in college to work well with peers and professors.
We saw a common theme of students being able to build communication skills in this year’s student interviews and our end of the year student survey. When describing the program, recent program graduate and 2021 Pride Big of the Year Precious Mannie stated “This is a program where you speak up, you make things happen, your words have volume.”
Make it stand out
After reviewing and analyzing the data from this year, most students felt as though the program helped them with building relationships and adjust back to in-person school in general. However, there is always room for improvement. Next year we are hoping to focus more on skills for improving one's GPA, self-advocacy, and helping students solve problems they face outside of school. Furthermore, we want to hone in on helping students to connect skills learned inside of the program to their everyday lives.
As we continue to grow as an organization, we have some exciting updates to share:
Our first ever in-person fundraiser, our Are You Smarter Than A Ninth Grader? Trivia Night will be held on Thursday July 14, tickets can be purchased here.
We are excited to have Brianna Kuramitsu join the team. As Program Manager, Brianna plans to continue developing how we collect and analyze data, increase support and resources offered to each of our schools, and assist with expanding our reach to more schools in the city. She believes developing strong relationships with school and community leaders will be key to Lion's Pride success, and ensure more students are able to benefit from the program.
For more Lion's Pride Mentoring updates, check out our annual report when it is released on Thursday, July 28th. Sign up for our newsletter to receive a notification when it goes live.
