A Call to Participate in Prime Mentors International: Mentoring "At-Risk" Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mentors of Canada (PMC) is a charitable organization currently based at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and run by a distinguished Board of Directors. The term is based on an acronym suggesting a program and individuals that are Positive, Responsible, Inspiring, Multi-talented, and Exemplary. Founded in 1987 by Professor Conchita Tan-Willman, PhD, PMC was honored in 1993 by the Federal Department of Health and Welfare as one of the most outstanding intergenerational programs in Canada. PMC has also received the Presidential Citation from the World Council of Gifted and Talented Children for its contribution to the development of human potential. With its 27 years of experience and proven outcomes, PMC may serve as a global model for boards of education throughout the world and could become known as Prime Mentors International.Rationale, Vision, and MissionPMC 's vision and mission focus on tapping the potential talents of children, ages 9 to 13 years, who are from socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods. These atrisk, bright children are often neglected at home and consequently are underachievers due to lack of opportunities. It is well known that bright children without proper childhood guidance are at a greater risk of dropping out of school or turning to a life of crime or drugs (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). PMC 's mission is to identify such children who show creative potential during their formative years and to match them with a volunteer mentor and role model.Mentoring has been shown to help young people, especially at-risk youth, succeed in school, work, and life. A strong research base supports the efficacy of quality mentoring, including a recent meta-analysis of more than 73 independent mentoring programs that found positive outcomes across social, emotional, behavioral, and academic areas of youth development. The question we must then ask is if mentoring at a young age is a global solution to help decrease violence, as well as drug and alcohol abuse (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014).In particular, the Bruce and Bridgeland (2014) meta-analysis on the impact of various mentoring programs showed that children at risk who have been mentored are more likely to aspire for a postsecondary education compared to those at-risk children who have not participated in a mentoring program (76% vs. 55%). Furthermore, the meta-analysis showed that, of those who are mentored, nearly half (45%) actually attend a postsecondary program as compared to 29% of those who were not mentored. The PMC's experience over 27 years is powerful proof of the impact and efficacy of the mentoring program for those at-risk children.A Special Focus: Collaborative ProjectsTeachers are sensitive to children's needs, but, because it is not always possible to give these bright children special attention in a busy classroom, the mentors are welcomed as an alternative source of development within the educational system. In PMC 's special, oneon-one mentoring relationships, proteges and mentors are matched based on common interests and strengths. The child and mentor design and develop a self-chosen project that, upon completion, is presented to the protege's school. The presentation thus extends the benefits of the program to other students in the child's class. The PMC process is intended to develop communication, problem solving, and a curiosity in the research process as it relates to the topic of interest. The experience of developing a project alongside his or her mentor is intended to replace the support and motivation that may be missing in the child's home. Such support may then spark an interest in the children to continue their educations and achieve their creative potential rather than selecting a path that does not include postsecondary education. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".