I thought that new – and veteran – readers might find it interesting if I began sharing my best posts from over the years. You can see the entire collection here.

I wrote this post in 2013.  

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On The Value & Practice Of Having Older Students Mentoring Younger Ones. That post includes my latest related post, Here Are The Instructions I Give Mentors To Our ELLs – Help Me Make Them Better.

A new study found that high school seniors paired with college mentors to prepare college applications and financial aid requests resulted in a fifty percent increase in students who actually ended up attending college. They met weekly for a short time, and the high school students also received a $100 bonus. However, they said the money didn’t affect them at all — it was the mentorship that made a difference, and a control group that just received the bonus without the mentorship showed no difference in college attendance.

You can read a good write-up on the research results at Sarah Spark’s Education Week post, Senior Mentors, Not Bonuses, Boost College Enrollment, Study Finds.

This research is obviously interesting to me because of all my work in helping students develop intrinsic motivation.

Now, though, I’m also intrigued by the study because of our increasing support for peer mentors in our own school.