Case Study: Using School-Based Mentoring for Attendance and Post-Secondary Success

In the fall of 2023, Lumen High School implemented a mentorship program to better support its student population of teen parents. The program launched with two initial goals: improve school attendance and support students in their semester-long internships.

Student attendance was an ongoing concern for Lumen leaders. Lumen students, in addition to being teen parents, face multiple, overlapping challenges. In the 2023–24 school year, 59% were unaccompanied minors, 16% were homeless, and 17% were involved in the juvenile justice system. Many students had to navigate employment, housing applications, and court systems, in addition to juggling school work and childcare. It’s no surprise that demands like these would negatively impact attendance; no student met the district’s reporting guidelines of fewer than two absences per month. On average, the rate of student absences equated to 3.8 days per month during the 2022–23 school year.

Though Lumen students have unique needs, their experience with attendance was not unusual. Nationwide, chronic absenteeism skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic and numbers have yet to wane. The share of U.S. students who were absent for at least 10% of the school year rose from 15% in 2019 to 28% in 2022. In low-income communities, chronic absenteeism rose from 19% to 32%.

At the same time that Lumen sought new ways to improve attendance, it was also scaling up a program that put qualified students into paid internships once a week. The internship program is part of the school’s efforts to place students on a path toward post-secondary success. Lumen leaders hope that internships will prepare students for life after high school by giving them work experience in jobs with living wage potential. The experience can also help students try different career options and clarify the kind of post-secondary training they will need.

As the internship program ramped up, the school worried that their single internship coordinator would become overwhelmed by the daunting task of maintaining communication with all the students and internship sites on a regular basis. The school also believed that they would be able to improve the internship program faster by gathering input from multiple school staff — input informed by students’ experiences.

Lumen Tries a New Set of Supports

To combat attendance challenges and support student internships, Lumen High School introduced Mentor Center in the 2023–24 school year. The program ensures that every enrolled student has an adult who meets with them on a regular basis. That mentor also becomes a person the student can reach out to concerning issues in or out of school that may affect their academic life. “They automatically have that person who they know, no matter what, they can go to,” said Lumen’s internship coordinator.

Lumen is alternatively structured for teen parent education, so orientation toward care is a requisite principle when the high school hires and onboards new staff. This eased the introduction of Mentor Center. To launch the initiative, all school staff — including teachers, the office manager, leadership, counselor, and the lunch coordinator — were assigned two to four mentees. Many of those assignments were based on pre-existing relationships between staff and students. To build and strengthen relationships, administrators set aside time during staff meetings for mentors to plan ways to connect with their mentees. This included making cards and planning check-in activities.

School leadership expected mentors to check in with their mentees at least once a week. To guide these conversations, the internship coordinator and principal often shared prompts and activities in a common spreadsheet. On weeks with no guided prompt, mentors had general check-ins with students. Mentors also pushed in on an ad hoc basis when the school's behavior support app, Supported School, flagged them that mentees were experiencing disciplinary issues or were struggling academically. (Supported School is a free software available to Washington State schools and helps track student progress.)

The mentoring practice guarantees that every student at Lumen receives support, not just students who are proactive about asking for help or who are in clear need of guidance. “It’s supposed to ensure that every single student is developing a relationship with somebody,” said the school’s counselor.

Staff also found that Mentor Center helped streamline communication. “If there is something going on at school, like a reminder that we need to give students, we can divide that labor that way, so it’s like, ‘Hey, just make sure you tell your three mentees that we’re going shopping tomorrow and they need to wear warm clothes,’” said one staff member.

While Lumen staff always supported students, having designated mentees helped them clearly define who is responsible when a particular student needs help. The practice also helps build a more robust community between students and staff at Lumen. “It allows me to build a relationship with somebody that I would not normally have a relationship with,” said the internship coordinator. “I think it is always helpful to know more students because it allows me to have conversations with them about what they want to do in their future.”