Retired ‘Mentors’ Try to Help Youngsters Stay in School : Social Ties: Programs that pair at-risk youths with mature advisers often result in rewarding relationships for both.

Lillian Goldberg spent 15 years as a teacher and administrator in New York City schools, but developed her deepest relationships with students after she retired.

“For the first time in my life, I’ve been able to work with them on a one-on-one basis and to help them follow their interests,” Goldberg, 70, said of her work with youngsters in Florida. “It opens up vistas of knowledge for me, and I see the blossoming of the children.”

In Saugus, Mass., 70-year-old James Brennan’s efforts to help young toughs get jobs and stay out of trouble keeps him going in his own battle against cancer.

“Undoubtedly, this program has something to do with my mental and physical health,” Brennan said. “I would hate to think that when one becomes a certain age they’re disposable. That thought always plagued me.”

In Ann Arbor, Mich., 61-year-old Nancy Perkins works with junior high schoolers who need special attention or a push with their homework.

“You feel like you’re doing something, rather than sitting home wringing your hands about the dropout rate,” Perkins said.

“The whole idea of linking youth and elders is really gaining a lot of momentum,” said Nancy Henkin, director of the Center for Intergenerational Learning at Temple University’s Institute on Aging. “People are finally realizing that these are two groups that should get together.”

Now that elderly people make up the fastest-growing segment of the population more than 12 million youngsters need tutorial help, intergenerational match-ups are “something whose time has come,” Henkin said.

One such idea, called mentoring, pairs older Americans with youngsters in one-on-one relationships. Mentoring is distinguished from other intergenerational programs by development of deeper relationships between the adults and youngsters who need unconditional love, encouragement and strong adult role models. Children who succeed against long odds often are those who have had personal relationships with adults, Henkin said.

Temple recently launched a $3-million Linking Lifetimes program, sponsored by five foundations, that will help nine communities set up mentor projects, pairing older people with young offenders and troubled youth. The mentors, to be paid a small stipends, will spend at least two hours a week helping their young partners make decisions about schooling, jobs and other aspects of life.

In Springfield, Mass., for example, retirees will help teen-age offenders stay in school and steer clear of crime. The mentors are in a unique position to because they’re neither parents nor professional counselors, said John Tansey, director of the Springfield project. “These elders don’t have to prove anything to the kids. They’re there just for these kids and to listen.”

In Memphis, Tenn., a program called Linking Lifetimes will pair low-income women with pregnant girls of junior high school age. Director Jane Watkins said that in addition to helping the girls, the mentors will help prevent abuse and neglect of their babies.

Other Linking Lifetimes programs are being launched in Los Angeles, Miami and St. Petersburg, Fla., Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala., Hartford, Conn., and Syracuse, N.Y. The results will be reviewed by the California Research Center and Public-Private Ventures, a nonprofit corporation based in Philadelphia that designs and evaluates social policy programs.

Current mentoring programs are promising, but there has been little study of their effects, Henkin said.

While mentoring programs are catching on, projects matching seniors with troubled youths are rare, said Sandra Sweeney, of the American Assn. of Retired Persons. “For the right kind of person it’s a terrific experience, but there are more barriers to working with at-risk youth.

“They may not share some of the same backgrounds or know how to approach kids who may have been in trouble.”

One success story is that of Work Connection, based in Saugus, Mass., in which retirees, who earn weekly salaries based on caseload, help young offenders find and hold jobs as an alternative to going to jail. In the last four years, more than 350 people have been “graduated” from the program.

“It’s amazing how the relationship evolves and develops,” said director Kelly Quinlan. “It never really stops, because our participants still keep in touch with their mentors. They’ve made a permanent friend.”

Jack Petrolopoulos, former coordinator of the program, told of a tough Greek immigrant who was assigned to Steve, a 19-year-old who had been arrested for a variety of crimes. Steve’s mentor, Nick, never gave up even though Steve went through a string of jobs and even stole a wristwatch from another mentor, Joe, and denied it. Nick would see Steve several times a week, consult with his employers and sometimes even roust him from bed and drive him to work.

Steve eventually became a reliable employee and avoided further scrapes with the law. A judge ultimately gave him a suspended two-year sentence for his earlier offenses. Perhaps just as significantly, Steve presented Joe with a new watch and told Nick: “I know I’ve never said this, but I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for you guys. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”

Brennan, a former fire chief, has worked with about 65 young adults through the Work Connection in the last five years. He claims success with more than half of those youths. There was also, however, frustration when someone let him down.

“You’ll have a couple clients that are doing real well, and then you’ll pick up the daily paper and find out that one of them has committed an armed robbery,” he said. “I get terribly disappointed and frustrated. It’s almost as though they’re one of your own family.”

In Michigan, Ann Arbor’s TLC program--Teaching-Learning Communities--arranges for senior mentors to meet at school each week with junior high school students who are in danger of dropping out or having other problems.

Youngsters tell their mentors, “just the fact that you’re here in this room gives me courage,” said Carol Tice, who directs the program. The elders, meanwhile, “know that their life has made a difference.”

One mentor helped an angry and withdrawn 12-year-old girl relate well to her peers and advance three years in her reading skill. Another was able to steer a bright 15-year-old girl into counseling after suicidal themes started cropping in her creative writing projects.

Elly Strauch, 65 and a TLC mentor for nearly three years, said she gets more from the program than she gives. “I’ve always loved teaching. To be able to get back to it after retirement was really luckier than I ever thought I’d be. They’re never going to dislodge me from TLC.”

In Florida, the Senior Mentors for Creative Students program was started in Broward County in 1982 and now operates in 22 school districts. Senior volunteers are paired with students with common interests who need additional challenges.

Goldberg, the retired New York educator, helped a Broward County grade schooler do research into space law by visiting courthouses and judges, and the girl later expressed interest in becoming an attorney.

“To help youngsters realize their own potential for creativity and their own ability to do something,” Goldberg said, “That’s the wonder of it.”