Military Student Mentoring: Project Overview

A recent survey found that over 1/3 of military families lacked confidence that their children’s school was responsive to the needs of military students and their parents (available at www.bluestarfam.org). Early school success is an important precursor to positive educational, vocational and health outcomes later in life (Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992; Leventhal, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2001), but most school districts lack the infrastructure needed to identify and support military students (Astor, Pedro, Gilreath, Esqueda, & Benbenishty, 2013). Needed are strategies that identify and support military students before serious declines in academic performance or school behavior (Astor et al., 2013).

Our team received IES funding to conduct a 4-year project that aims to help school districts provide a measured, preventative response to students whose academic performance and school behavior is negatively affected by deployment-related stress. The goal of the Military Student Mentoring (MSM) Project is to develop a strategic model for school-based mentoring (SBM) that is coordinated by school districts and implemented by elementary schools in partnership with local mentoring agencies. In this poster, we describe the project and detailing our plans for developing, refining, and evaluating a practical and sustainable SBM program that school districts can use to support students whose families serve in our country’s military. Our premise is that an effective strategy for serving military students will require dedicated staff and concentrated effort by school districts to establish home-school-community (HSC) partnerships involving four key stakeholders: a) local elementary schools, b) military parents of students at those schools, c) local community organizations, and d) local mentoring agencies (Epstein et al., 2009). Without support from and collaboration among community organizations, mentoring agencies and, most importantly, military families, schools will find it difficult to identify, engage, and serve military students (Astor et al., 2013; Esqueda et al., 2012).

In this poster, we describe our iterative process for developing an intervention that: a) builds on the resiliency of military families; b) meets the challenge of engaging military families; c) effectively serves the needs of military students; d) uses best practices in school-based mentoring; e) draws volunteer mentors from local community organizations; and f) operates despite the many demands and constraints currently faced by schools and school districts.