Full-Circle: Welcoming Sparks High School Outreach to CCE Mentoring programs
For over 20 years, Gonzaga’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE) has taken pride in the relationships it has fostered with local elementary and middle schools through our many mentoring programs. This year, staff and leaders are thrilled to take the natural next step in developing those relationships with the introduction of CCE’s new Sparks mentoring program at J.R. Rogers High School. Senior and Sparks leader, Jaden Zwick, reflects on this opportunity to bring Gonzaga’s school outreach full circle.
A Reflection by Jaden Zwick
My first two years at Gonzaga, I participated in a CCE mentoring program at the elementary school level. I loved the experience, but always wished that I could have had the chance to work with older students in the community. In fact, I found it odd that we did not have our university students plugged in at local high schools, when we have so much wisdom to share with the kids that are closest to beginning their post-high school journeys.
As soon as I saw the announcement for the new high school mentoring program leader application—before Sparks even had a name—I knew that I was called to be part of this opportunity. The idea of “vocation” can easily become cliché on a campus as Jesuit-oriented as ours, but in many ways, I appreciate the emphasis on purpose and common good that our work is grounded in here at Gonzaga. Personally, I found great joy in discovering that this mentoring program was everything that my previous experience had prepared me for. For Gonzaga, I saw this as an exceptional opportunity to connect high school students to college mentors and thread together our university’s presence throughout the K-12 grades in the Spokane Public School District.
The development of a sustainable program in a local high school seemed like an inevitable expansion of CCE’s outreach. Now, as we enter our second month of programming, we are able to gather impressions of what its impact is already meaning for the community. One of the most exciting aspects of Sparks is the long-standing connections that it carries even further. There are high school students involved in the program that have participated in Gonzaga-facilitated mentoring since they were in elementary school. Several of our mentors are even in the program with the same mentees that they worked with in CCE’s middle school programs.
The team of Gonzaga mentors is a remarkable cohort of people. There are 14 of us total, each from vastly different walks of life and areas on campus. Between us, our academic majors range from Engineering to English; our hometowns are as far away as Dallas and as near as Spokane; we are comprised of first year students as well as seniors; many of us are first-generation college students; all of us have a variety of experiences working with youth. We are a dynamic, diverse, exceptional group of role models for an equally exceptional group of high school students.
In Jesuit tradition and in alignment with our university’s mission statement, we commit ourselves, not only to being with our high school students each week, but also to pursuing social justice through education and solidarity. Collectively, we have a firm belief in the power and potential of education, but as a program we are pushed to strive beyond the academic framework for empowering our students.
Our time at programming has, thus far, included leadership and identity development, with hopes of introducing our students to topics in social justice and engaging in critical conversations on the horizon. While we use this opportunity to invest in their academic success and future-orientation, as always with mentoring programs, Sparks boils down to simple companionship that both mentor and mentee greatly enjoy.
If you walked into our classroom on a Wednesday afternoon, you would be inspired by the energy that our high school students bring and the enthusiasm that our Gonzaga mentors reciprocate. The genuine interest that we take in one another is remarkable, and the amount of insight that all of us gain from each other in a single two-hour session of mentoring is outstanding.
We are extremely excited to see how Sparks grows this year: as a community, as a program, and as a model for future years of mentoring. With such a passionate team of mentors and talented set of mentees, we are hopeful that Sparks will continue to be a space for camaraderie, encouragement, and transformation.
For more information on Gonzaga’s Center for Community Engagement’s new Sparks programming, contact Brandi Praytor-Marsters at marsters@gonzaga.edu.