Friends School of Atlanta Launches Mentor Program with GSU Students

by Nancy Bent

The Friends School of Atlanta launched a program pairing student mentors from Georgia State University with FSA seventh graders.

The objective is to have a diverse range of young men and women share experiences from their high school and college careers, helping FSA students to anticipate higher levels of education as well as to begin to see wide-ranging possibilities for the future.

The idea for the Mentor Program comes from the Diversity Plan for the school. FSA was founded as a model of diversity in 1991 and has always maintained a student body that is 45 percent children of color on average.

The Mentor Program is one of many ways the FSA faculty and administration are able to ensure that diverse role models are available to validate and encourage all FSA students, who come from many different races, faith traditions, ethnicities, family structures and socioeconomic backgrounds, among other differences. Such attention to the needs of a diverse school community reflects the Quaker philosophy of respect for all individuals that underpins the entire program of The Friends School of Atlanta, the only Quaker school in Georgia.

“We have been delighted by the immediate rapport established between older and younger students,” said Waman French, the school's headmaster.

“Judging from the amount of laughter and high level of enthusiasm always present at the mentoring sessions, it is hard to know who is benefiting the most, the FSA or GSU students.”

The program was begun in October and will run throughout the 2013-2014 school year.