Volunteers Help Students Set Goals : Mentors Encourage, Advise Inner-City Youth

Sean Varner’s family lived in a shelter for the homeless. The teen-ager owned few clothes, was failing in school and considered dropping out. Then John Hogan entered his life.

“I needed someone to talk to,” said Varner, now 17 and a senior at McKinley Senior High School . “I couldn’t talk to my mother and I’ve only seen my father once. It was the lowest point I ever reached.”

Hogan, a doctor who works in the emergency rooms of Howard University and D.C. General hospitals, became Varner’s mentor. They were matched 18 months ago by Mentors Inc., a nonprofit agency that has set up mentorship programs at seven Washington public schools. With Hogan’s encouragement and support, Varner turned his life around.

Courted by Colleges

This year Varner earned the highest score at McKinley on the Preliminary Scholastic Achievement Test. A host of colleges are courting him. His conversations are peppered with talk about his future, about college and a career as an engineer.

What happened to Sean Varner illustrates how concerned adults are touching the lives of troubled youths around the country through mentoring programs. It is the perfect answer for a generation of people who have time to volunteer and a desire to help solve some of the problems plaguing young people in inner cities.

“A lot of people say they want to help, but don’t know how,” said Shayne Schneider, president of the 2-year-old Mentors Inc.

“Most of my mentors see themselves as a link in a chain,” Schneider said. “They had a mentor and they want to be a mentor.”

Most of her mentors “are African-Americans, a slight majority are women,” she said. They are generally college-educated and in their 30s and 40s. The No. 1 reason that youths give for wanting a mentor is to have somebody to talk to, said Schneider.

Programs Proliferate

The programs are cropping up everywhere and have varying goals, though they all seem to deal ultimately with increasing a youth’s self-esteem. The Greater Washington Board of Trade runs a program aimed at academically average students, and it pairs the students with mentors who will help them identify short- and long-term goals, including finishing school and planning a career.

A University of the District of Columbia radio station set up a mentorship program in which black men serve as mentors to black pupils at Malcolm X Elementary School to help them “establish a blueprint for success,” one mentor explained.

Churches, schools and community organizations are starting their own programs. When the Federal National Mortgage Assn., known as Fannie Mae, started a scholarship fund for youths at Woodson High School here, a mentor program was incorporated into it.

Schneider said the 300 students in her programs are more motivated and are planning for further education. “As they . . . set goals, they see pregnancy and drugs as obstacles that would slow them down,” she said.

But those are by no means children with perfect lives. A teen-age girl was very early in a pregnancy when matched with a mentor, who by coincidence was also pregnant. The girl was kicked out of her home and got married. Through it all, her mentor guided her, pushed her to continue school, took her to the doctor for prenatal care and helped her prepare for motherhood.

Eight months pregnant, the young woman attended school from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and worked at a McDonald’s from 4 p.m. until 11 p.m. Then Mentors Inc. gave her $400 so she could stay home until her baby was born. Today, she is a mother, but also a senior and honor student.

Jeffrey Johnson, author of “The Endangered Black Male” who helped radio station WDCU-FM set up its program, said formal mentorship programs are needed because informal nurturing relationships are not forming as frequently as in the past.

“Barbers, ministers, beauticians and many church people have mentored children in their communities,” Johnson said. “What has changed is the natural process of mentoring, interrupted by the flight of the middle class and the disintegration of families.

“The rite of passage for success has become the ability to leave one’s neighborhood,” Johnson said. “That means isolation for the truly disadvantaged and a decline in role models. The new (middle-class) black man’s burden is how to become successful without leaving the poor black person behind.”

In the WDCU-FM program, mentors tutor students each Saturday and attend workshops held for the youths’ parents. The men also visit the children in their classrooms and take them on trips.

Sees Boys Change

Joseph A. Carter Jr., assistant principal at Malcolm X, asked Ernest White, the radio station’s public affairs director, for help after he noticed how boys changed between the third and fourth grades.

“It seemed that the summer before fourth grade something happens. They returned to school angry, with clenched fists, pent-up hostility. They were absent from school a lot more, “ Carter said.

“I thought a lack of positive role models might have something to do with it.”

There are 32 boys in the program, Carter said. Each Saturday they are tutored in math and reading. On a recent Saturday, during a downpour, 10 boys sauntered in at 10 a.m. for their weekly two-hour tutoring. Fourteen mentors stood waiting. The mentors passed out pencils and work sheets with problems suggested by a counselor at Malcolm X.

“It’s taken a year to get their respect,” said mentor Ben Hawley. “They’re used to people dropping money for programs and leaving. But we’re here for life.”

Question Children

The mentors whispered questions such as, “What did you eat for breakfast?” “What time did you get up?” “What time did you go to sleep?” They patted the children on their backs for jobs well done.

During the second hour they read aloud articles on famous Africans and black American men such as poet Langston Hughes, musician-composer Duke Ellington and Shaka Zulu.

“Shaka Zulu was real? I thought he was just a movie,” said one boy, who had seen a television program about the southern Africa warrior.

Jesse Wade, 9, was reading about Paul Robeson when his father, Lee Wade, walked in. “This is doing a lot for him,” the father said. “His school skills have improved. He enjoys it. I’ve been sick and so there’s a lot I can’t do with him because of my health. This program is exactly what the doctor ordered.”

While Carter said he has not seen “landslide” changes in his boys, he noted, “I see boys liking school, peer pressure moving from where you are a nerd because you like school to a group of guys who say it’s OK to come to school.”

White has noticed that mentoring is an infinite number of small steps. He is mentor to three students at Malcolm X. He recalls taking one young boy to a restaurant. The waiter brought the menu and White was looking it over when he noticed the boy was crying.

“I can’t do it!” the boy said.

White discovered it was the boy’s first time sitting down in a full-service restaurant. He generally ate at fast-food establishments. After more tears, a little time and some encouragement from White, the young protege ordered from a hand-held menu for the first time in his life.

“Now I can take him anywhere to eat,” said White. “If he doesn’t know what something is, he asks the waiter.”

“Sean was very shy, not very sure of himself,” Hogan said. “He told me he was an A student, but he had Ds and Fs in his classes. I asked what did he want to do and he went on about engineering and computers and college. I’m sitting there saying, ‘Man, you better wake up.’ ”

After a few more meetings, Hogan said he realized that the youth was very motivated.

“Once we relieved some of the pressure, his grades went from Ds, Fs to four As, Bs in one grade period.

“There would be a hole in my soul if I did not get satisfaction out of seeing what happened with Sean,” said Hogan. “But I can’t take credit for it. I don’t go to school for him or tutor him in his subjects. All Sean needed was a helping hand.”