In cross-age peer mentoring programs, high school students mentor younger students. Prior research demonstrates the positive effects for mentees as well as for mentors. This context-based, strengths-promoting intervention is designed to help school counselors foster high school students’ leadership and collaboration skills while simultaneously promoting elementary and middle school mentees’ connectedness, self-esteem, and academic achievement. Using a tiered set of students as intervention agents, cross-age peer mentoring programs provide a unique strengths-based intervention for school counselors at any grade level. Consistent with the ASCA National Model®, but unlike most approaches to youth mentoring, cross-age mentoring programs can be structured by a calendar of connectedness themes that informs school counselors’ action and accountability plans and can utilize a connectedness curriculum to guide the delivery of guidance lessons by students to students.
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