Mentoring program celebrates at time of transition
When the federal funding that supported it was yanked earlier this year, an after-school mentoring program at Meadville Area Middle School (MAMS) faced a daunting predicament.
Surrounded by about 40 family members and community mentors at an end-of-the-year celebration Wednesday, the program's eight student leaders showed that they were up to the task and by the end of the event it was clear their efforts had paid off in a concrete way.
'We viewed the loss of the Department of Environmental Protection grant as an opportunity to assess how our instruction in budgeting, problem solving, communication skills, time management, teamwork, dependability and creativity in the use of our local resources has influenced our students,' MAMS social studies teacher and MLK Mentoring Program teacher Harrison Dixon told the crowd assembled in the school library. 'They have overcome challenges and made, in fact, quite a recovery.'
Now in its 14th year, the mentoring program received a $50,000 grant last fall that was expected to fund the program through next year. Administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the actual funds came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental and Climate Justice Program, a program that was quickly targeted for cuts when the Trump administration came into office in January. Mentoring program officials learned in April that the funding had been frozen.
With support from Crawford Central School District, Allegheny College and numerous other businesses, organizations and individuals, the program carried on this semester, allowing students to continue work on RecyclKings, the business they had conceived and developed during the two-hour sessions they attended four times each week.
'This year has given us the opportunity to grow in many ways and respond to challenges we once thought we couldn't survive — but we did!' eighth grader Jocelyn Hart, the company president, told the audience.
Plans are in the works to shift control of the program from the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund to Crawford Central School District. Details of that transition are still being determined, according to Ken Wolfarth, the district's curriculum director, but the program's three-week summer camp is set to kick off next Wednesday.
Some students might not immediately see the appeal of a program that keeps them in school an extra two hours each day — or that gets them up early for a full day of activities in the summer — but for students like seventh grader Izzabella Lutton, the RecyclKings production manager, the opportunity was too good to resist.
'I like that it was a hands-on learning-based thing where you could work with people who were older or younger than you,' she said in an interview after the ceremony concluded. 'It something that brings people together. It inspires them to become more than what they already can be. Being in it for a whole year, it was definitely tough to stay at sometimes, but I pushed forward because I knew I could do it and I knew that whatever tried to stop me, I would push that aside.'
The program received rave reviews from Izzabella's mother, Natalie Mullenax, as well.
'It really keeps them busy and learning as they're having a good time too,' she said.
The program typically includes a diverse mix of skill development activities. The past semester included trips for swimming and skating at Meadville Area Recreation Complex; watershed science work in Mill Run; enough practice in American Sign Language to carry on basic conversations; mock job interviews at Acutec Precision Aerospace Inc.; and much more.
One new focus was the RecyclKings business that saw students working to raise awareness and collect cans and other items. In his annual report, RecyclKings Treasurer Gavin Kerr, an eighth grader, reported that through a dumpster in the school parking lot, a 'Pod War' school spirit event in which groups of students competed to bring in the most cans for recycling, sales of T-shirts, donations and other activities, the business had generated more than $2,600 in revenue.
The students donated $1,000 to the MAMS annual drive in recognition of the students who supported their efforts. After other expenses, nearly $850 remained for a profit-sharing program benefiting the eight students that formed the company. The precise amount each student received was calculated using a formula that factored in criteria such as attendance, respect, problem solving and teamwork. In the end, each of the eight students left the ceremony with sums ranging between $100 and $122.
With the program's impending transition to Crawford Central, the ceremony also marked the departure of Armendia Dixon, a champion of education in Meadville and northwestern Pennsylvania for more than 50 years.
As the last remaining students and their families left the library, Dixon reflected on the program she helped launch 14 years ago and that has now helped more than 550 students in their journey to high school and beyond.
'My goodness, I am so proud of the many graduates,' Dixon said. 'They are doing things and it is remarkable.'
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