For the third year in a row Project MALES in partnership with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) will kick off its mentorship this week at all of our eight sites, starting with our middle schools: Webb Middle School, Martin Middle School, Mendez Middle School, and Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy. In addition, we are at the following high schools: Travis Early College High School (ECHS), Lanier High School, and Reagan ECHS in Austin ISD. This semester we have also added Lyndon B. Johnson ECHS as one of our new mentoring sites.
Our kick off week activities will include a pizza party where our UT undergraduate students mentors, work-study students, ULN interns, and mentoring staff, will introduce Project MALES to our middle and high school students, at their respective school campuses. During this event mentees will be introduced to the Project MALES Student Mentoring Program through icebreakers and introductions of mentors.
Our Mentoring Site Coordinators Jorge Rodriguez, Rodrigo Aguayo, Enrique Aguayo and Jorge Segovia will each be assigned two sites to lead along with a team of UT undergraduate student mentors. In addition, our new undergraduate mentors work-study students, and ULN interns will enroll in the Impacting Males through Peer Advising College Tracks (IMPACT), our two-credit service-learning course concurrent with placement in a school site. Our student mentors will continue to create dialogue around issues impacting young men of color in our communities. We will continue to work on mentor development as well as developing a range of topics and activities focusing on college and career pathways after high school for our mentees.
We are looking forward to another successful semester. Stay tuned to learn more about our mentors and our school sites; we will be profiling our mentoring sites in the following weeks.
