We started the week with first lady Michelle Obama spreading the mentoring message, so it seems fitting we end it in a place where such work is actually being done: Kepner Middle School, Room 107.
We’re a long way from the governor’s mansion. You will find no astronauts or Cabinet secretaries or otherwise famous women here. Instead, the mentors are high school students, young women from the neighborhood. This does more than give them a connection to the sixth- and eighth-grade girls they mentor. It gives them credibility.
Kepner sits just west of South Federal Boulevard and West Kentucky Avenue in 80219. With about 1,000 students, it’s Denver Public Schools’ largest middle school. Nine of 10 students come from low-income families. Poverty. Hormones. It’s safe to say turmoil is no stranger here.
The mentors in Room 107 this day are Jennessa Andrade, a Lincoln High School junior, and Ahliyah Lopez, a Lincoln sophomore.
They’ve been meeting with the same group of about 15 girls, all sixth-graders, for seven weeks now.
On Thursday, just before their session ends, they sit in a circle on the classroom floor.
OK, everyone, Jennessa says, rate your day and your week on a scale of one to 10. “One being not so good. Ten being awesome.”
The first girl says: “Three or four this week.” “And your day?” “One,” the girl says. “Do want to talk about it?” No.
Next girl: “Today, I’m a 10 because I feel alive and excited and I don’t know why.” “And your week?” “A 10.”
Next girl: “Today I’m a nine. This week is a two. Should I say why?” “If you want.” “Cause there’s too much pressure.” “Do you want to say where?” “At home, at school,” the girl says. “It’s really hard to balance those things sometimes,” Ahliyah says.
Around they go.
This summer, I caught myself bopping along to a catchy song on the radio. Then I tuned in to the words. “Don’t trust a ho. Never trust a ho.” Followed by: “Shush, girl. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.”
A long time ago, I hate to say, I might have been able to ignore that lyric. But I have an 11-year-old daughter, and I no longer find such entertainment harmless.
I seem to be engaged in battle against the skimpy clothing, the advertisements, the music, the television shows, everything that tells my child her value lies in one thing: her sexuality.
This is not unlike the circumstance Debra McKenney, a co-founder of the Smart-Girl mentoring program, found herself in during the late 1990s. “My daughters were 10 and 12. I was smack in the throes of this.”
She joined with three other mothers, including Alma Lantz, who holds a doctorate in the psychology of learning and statistics, and who developed much of the program’s structure.
“Who is an effective role model is not age-bound,” Lantz says, “but it takes less time to build trust if they look like you and they come from your neighborhood. When I went to a middle school, it was clear they didn’t want to see an adult. Conversation just stopped. But high school and college girls . . .”
“They’re still very much a part of their world,” McKenney says.
And so, the mentors, using various activities, go over personal responsibility, peer pressure, body image, conflict resolution. Their training is extensive and geared toward teaching girls how to think, not what to think. Smart-Girl now has 91 groups running and offers summer camp.
Wealthy, middle or working class, white or minority, what the founders learned from the girls in their first groups is that their lives are different, but the need is the same.
And what is that need, I ask.
“Being able to be an individual and still feel accepted,” McKenney says.
“The need for belonging for this age group is paramount,” Lantz adds. “Their brains are making these huge leaps. Their bodies are out of control. We take them out of elementary school, drop them into middle school with all this going on, with the pervasive backdrop of sexuality. The girls haven’t changed. The world has.”
About 200 girls, most of them sixth-graders, will meet with their Smart-Girl mentors weekly through the end of the school year. Last year, three of four Kepner Smart-Girls said that because of their mentors, they not only want to graduate from high school, but believe they can.
After Thursday’s session, Ahliyah pulled aside a girl about whom she was worried. The two had a hushed conversation in the hall. What happens in Smart-Girl stays in Smart-Girl, and I will honor that.
“We can’t tell them how to live their lives,” Ahliyah told me later, “but we offer some guidance.” When the two parted, Ahliyah gave the sixth-grader her phone number and e-mail. If you need me, she told her, I’ll be there.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
