Students and mentors celebrate year of ‘iMentoring’ in Brooklyn

June 10, 2015 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle

High school students and their mentors celebrated a year of successful “iMentoring” on Saturday with games, lunch, and fun activities like tug-of-war in Cadman Plaza Park in Downtown Brooklyn. Photo by Mary Frost

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High school students and their mentors celebrated a year of successful “iMentoring” on Saturday with games, lunch from Panera Bread, and fun activities like tug-of-war and group dancing at a picnic in Cadman Plaza Park in Downtown Brooklyn.

“This is the culminating event at the end of a very long year where iMentor mentors and mentees are able to interact outside of their typical classroom settings,” Danielle Smith, managing director of communications for iMentor, told the Brooklyn Eagle.

This is the fifteenth year of the innovative program. Smith said that iMentor mentors and their student partners communicate by email weekly, and meet in person once a month.

“Some pairs do out-of-program events as well, where mentors are able to guide high school students through the process of college admissions,” she said.

“Our goal is college success,” Smith added.

Shaun Loubriel, a student at Frederick Douglass Academy II, told the Brooklyn Eagle that he didn’t want to join the iMentor program at first. “But my program director at school got me to go to the first event, and I liked it.”

Shaun praised his mentor, Marc Punnette. “Marc is a really cool guy, and we have a lot in common. That’s what got me to keep going.

“It’s very fun,” Shaun added. “I wasn’t going to go to this [picnic] but then I came and I’m having a lot of fun.”

Mentor Punnette said that he gets a lot out of the program himself.

“It’s just the joy of seeing Shaun develop,” he said. “We’ve only known each other for four or five months, but already I’m seeing he’s really becoming himself. He’s just setting off in high school; it’s a building process. Every year he’s going to get more acclimatized at school and with life and developing on his own. I’m just happy to be part of that, and take bits that I’ve learned from my past and help him along in his process.”

The iMentor program supports schools made up of primarily low-income students. Every kid in a participating school gets a mentor, and every kid’s mentor focuses solely on them. The relationship between mentor and mentee is guided by a set curriculum.

“This year we’re serving just under 6,000 students across the country, with a little over 3,000 in New York City,” mentor and administrator Daniel Greenblatt said. “We’re expanding the program by 600 students next year in New York City.”

When asked what mentors get out of the program, Greenblatt said, “Mentors learn a lot about themselves from the students.”

Mentee Shaun said he planned to stay in the program as long as he can. In the long run, he said, “I get friends like Marc and a lot of the knowledge that he has that he can pass on to me.”

People interested in mentoring should contact iMentor.org for more information.