Extensive research in the area of student development has emphasized the importance of providing positive environmental supports, such as mentors. The mentors develop caring relationships with the students, set high expectations, and provide ample opportunity for meaningful participation in the process. The presence of the mentors will help meet the fundamental developmental needs of students for belonging, security, respect, identity, power, mastery, and meaning. This, in turn, engages students’ innate resilience, promotes positive peer interactions, and protects against involvement in challenging behaviors such as substance abuse and violence. In addition, it improves outcomes for academic achievement.
Resilience research clearly documents the power of mentors to tip the scale from risk to resilience for students. Even among students growing up in overwhelmingly negative conditions, researchers have found that 70-80% of them have demonstrated healthy adjustment and achievement when schools are sensitive to them and provide supportive activities (Garbarino, J., Dubrow, Kostelny, K., and Pardo, C. 1992). Student development and successful learning are not competing goals but rather complementary processes. As Nel Noddings has observed:
It is clear that when schools focus on what really matters in life, the cognitive ends we now pursue so painfully and artificially will be achieved somewhat more naturally. It is obvious that children will work harder and do things…for people they trust (Noddings, N. 1988).