Just like UGGS and bell bottoms, there’s another program at Yutan making a comeback: Teammates mentoring. Teammates is a national program that pairs high school students with local adults to offer mentoring and extra support.
“The program is designed to be a strength-based approach to mentoring, where the mentor finds the strengths of their mentee and helps them make decisions about their future and set goals and stuff like that based on their strengths,” Yutan Teammates coordinator Jill Hoellen said.
A big advantage for the mentees of the Teammates program is having an extra adult that can not only provide support but be a role model. This is part of the reason Hoellen felt so strongly about getting the program going again.
“My personal opinion is every single kid could use another adult in their life to cheer them on, provide them confidence, be a sounding board, help them set goals, just a third party objective adult in their life,” Hoellen said. “So I think there’s so many benefits from the program, but I think the main reason I did it here is because I just felt we had so many students that would benefit from it.”
Unfortunately, since 2020, Yutan’s program hasn’t been very consistent. Like many things, COVID-19 was the reason the Teammates program was put on pause.
“So the program was discontinued, I believe sometime in about 2020-ish. I don’t know the exact date that it was discontinued because of COVID. Teammates was a little bit slow to respond to COVID, and the students and their mentors couldn’t meet face to face anymore, so the program was just kind of set aside,” Hoellen said.
Those people that were mentors before 2020 and knew about the many benefits were excited to hear that Hoellen was working to bring the program back.
“Jill’s doing a really good job, she’s looking into stuff and she’s being very, very active with [Teammates] and not just holding the position. She’s opening the chapter, but she’s going to take it and run with it and make it better and bigger,” math teacher and Teammates mentor Kassie Trevarrow said. “So I think it will be different just because someone different is running it, who is very passionate, and I think she has the time for it. So I think it’s going to be different than last time in a little bit better sense.”
Hoellen plans on utilizing every source she can to spread the word about Teammates coming back to life and to hopefully expand the chapter.
“We’re using the Chieftain Chatter, and we’re using Ms. Novotny’s email that gets sent out weekly. We are using, hopefully, this (story). I asked Mrs. Eikmeier if she would be willing to write a story so we can kind of communicate to people that in the past, I think Teammates was targeting youth who were troubled. Now any kid can have a mentor, and every kid would benefit from it,” Hoellen said.
This stereotype that Teammates is only for students who are struggling is something Hoellen is actively working to address.
“So our program is really trying to change the way people view the program by communicating that every kid would benefit from just having another adult spend 30 minutes with them. So it’s just kind of reversing the stigma. And I think we’re doing a good job of it,” Hoellen said.
Due to the hard work and effort to get this program going, so far they’ve been able to recruit both students a
nd adults to join the program.
“Our goal with Teammates that we set was to have 25 matches. So what that means is we started the year with two adults that were matched to two students. Right now we have 16 a
dults matched to 16 students, and our goal for the end of the school year is to have 25 matches. So we’re on track to meet that,” Hoellen said.
Sophomore Halle Arlt is one of the new mentees who signed up for Teammates this year, and she was paired with returning mentor Trevarrow.
“It’s been going really good. We just talk about life and what we did over the week, what our favorite part of the week was, if there’s anything that was bothering us. And I’m a talker, so I like talking a lot, but I also like listening. So it’s nice when one of us just keeps talking because I can listen, or she can listen to me, and it’s nice just to have that,” Arlt said.
Currently, Arlt and Trevarrow meet once a week in the mornings, but this is not Trevarrow’s first mentee. Trevarrow has been a part of Teammates since 2020. When COVID shut down the school, she and her other mentee, Millard West senior Jade Lewis, would talk over Zoom. She still holds that strong relationship with Lewis and hopes that all involved in Teammates will have that bond.
“I hope Jade or Halle, when they graduate, will come back and visit me here. I think Jade’s gonna go play college basketball. I hope to go watch her games,” Trevarrow said. “I think it’s something that’s big picture, and not saying this is gonna happen with every mentee and mentor, but I think it’ll be a lifelong thing. Some of them will turn into big relationships that you will have for the rest of your life.”
These sorts of relationships are what Hoellen hopes everyone experiences once joining the program. Without mentors like Trevarrow, however, Teammates wouldn’t have been able to make such a strong comeback, and Hoellen is thankful for the mentors already involved and hopes more mentors and mentees sign up.
“I just want to say thank you to the mentors. I mean, it’s just been amazing,” Hoellen said. “The community has really stepped up, and we now have mentors who are volunteering, whereas before, you know, it was just a lot of the board recruiting mentors, and now we have mentors who are reaching out to community members and saying, ‘How do I get involved in this?’ So I want to say a big shout out to our mentors, and without them, we wouldn’t have a program.”
