My View
How My Mentoring Is Making a Difference
BY GABRIELA G. MAFI/School Administrator, December 2021

WHEN I BECAME superintendent in 2013, one of my first goals was to visit all 45 elementary schools in the district to ensure that students, especially at our highest-poverty schools, knew and understood their path to college.

Whether in one-on-one mentoring or during assemblies to larger groups, I would reveal my journey of growing up in economically disadvantaged South Los Angeles, about being one of six children with a mother who had emigrated from Mexico as an adult, and later becoming a first-generation college student.

I hoped that students hearing my life experiences in school would realize not all the adults they interact with were born with ad-vantages in life and that, with hard work and grit, their futures were boundless. I routinely ended my presentations by asking students whether they want to attend college someday. Unanimously, they would raise their hands. Following one school assembly, I was approached by a few students who wanted to know how it was even an option for me to attend college if I grew up economically disadvantaged. They had internalized misconceptions about college being too expensive for low-income families to afford.

Fighting Expectations

I began mentoring secondary school students in 2006 when I served as the district’s director of 7-12 instruction. I’ve continued to individually mentor ever since.

In the Garden Grove Unified Schools, we are particularly focused on California university eligibility among Latinx students, the largest demographic. I mentored individual students who were placed for the first time in an AP or honors classroom, helping those students ac-climate and providing motivational support to overcome low expectations of adults and common misconceptions about college.

However, I realized the needs begin much earlier. Elementary students had a gap in their understanding of the possibilities of college. Some considered it impossible. Others had no idea their high school grades would determine college acceptance, and many students thought college was like K-12 in that you attend the college closest to where you live.

I was inspired to develop a program to combat such early misconceptions and help develop the grit, scholarly habits and drive for college success. In 2013-14, my first year as superintendent, I started by mentoring a group of 30 students in 6th grade at two of our high-poverty elementary schools. I called them my Class of 2020. I met with them once a month and several times during summers until their graduation from high school, with a goal of explicitly teaching them the study practices needed for success in school. I explained the college-going process and attempted to inspire each of them to set and attain short- and long-term goals.

I met with their parents regularly and intervened in the students’ high school course trajectory. I arranged several college visits each year. During the following year, I added on another high-poverty school for a total of 60 more mentees.

Paying It Forward

Recognizing the positive impact of mentoring 6th graders, I wanted to expand the ongoing support — but I had reached my personal limit.

In response, we developed the College and Career Mentoring Program in Garden Grove that used school district alumni to lead mentoring for the most at-risk 6th-grade students. The goal is to strengthen students’ motivation, self-efficacy and self-regulation, leading to greater academic achievement and college/career readiness. Taught by mentors currently attending a four-year university who once attended the same elementary school, the mentoring quickly established a positive rapport with students through familiarity of community and culture.

Over the last two years, my classes of 2020 and 2021 have both graduated, with nearly 70 percent going on to four-year universities, including Harvard, Stanford, University of California and California State University.

Now, in my 9th year as superintendent, I have taken on a new group of 60 incoming 7th graders who will go through the same journey. Some of my former mentees, now university students, serve as mentors and assist me during my meetings and campus field trips, paying it forward for the next generation. Si se puede! (Yes we can!)

GABRIELA MAFI is superintendent of Garden Grove Unified School District in Garden Grove, Calif.