The CCE has created an ever-evolving range of programs to support our students as both mentors and mentees. From the recently launched Heads Up Summer Academic Mentor Program to our new Hawk Fellowship, we are constantly finding ways to connect our students to others as both teacher and learner.
If you are a parent or professional community member interested in working with current students and young alumni, please email Nancy Feidelman. Head-Royce alumni can sign up to mentor or speak to current students here.
Head-Royce is very fortunate: we're a K-12 school on one campus. This close proximity of our three divisions allows for a wonderful array of student-to-student mentoring opportunities. Whether our Upper School students volunteer weekly in a Lower School classroom, tutor younger students, or offer special classes in our After School Program, the CCE supports such mutually beneficial mentoring connections within our school.
One such example of on-campus student-to-student mentoring was a Fall 2019 initiative — led by Mia C. '21 for her 11th Grade Community Engagement Project — called Students Teaching Students: STEM. A group of Upper Schoolers spent the day teaching hands-on, interactive STEM classes to our Lower Schoolers on the brain, robotics, and engineering. It was a big hit with our younger students. To learn more about this program, click here.
Malena C. ’22 teaches robotics to our
Lower Schoolers.
Another example of how our students mentor younger students both within and beyond Head-Royce, is Bryce D. ’21's project. As part of her 11th Grade Community Engagement Project and Girl Scout Gold Award, Bryce partnered with a rural mountain school in Haiti (Terre Froide Community School), first running a food, clothing, and school supplies drive, then visiting the school and working with the children there, and finally setting up a Francophone pen-pal system between Terre Froide and Head-Royce 5th grade French students. Bryce also stopped by each 3rd grade class to teach a lesson on education rights in Haiti.
We are grateful to HRS parents willing to mentor our current students by sponsoring an internship. One wonderful example of such parent mentoring has been at a new gaming company called Ritz Deli Games, where parent Robert Einspruch has enlisted the coding talents of three of our high schoolers. Robert let us know that his technical co-founder did a thorough review of our students’ code and told the HRS trio: “I have to say I am really impressed with your work.”
We are grateful to HRS alumni willing to mentor our current students by sponsoring an internship. One wonderful example of such alumni mentoring has been at Grand Lake Veterinary Hospital, one of the few independently owned veterinary hospitals left in Oakland. At GLVH, veterinarian and owner Elizabeth MacDonald '91 and hospital manager Anya Black '03 have mentored Head-Royce students interested in veterinary medicine.
