The U.S. Dream Academy's Mentoring Model

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Formal mentoring has been an effective approach to mitigate challenges facing underserved youth and contributes to observable improvements in behavior, relationships, and emotional well-being (Rhodes, 2008). Mentored youth appear to gain improvements in peer and parent relationships and school performance, while also engaging in lower levels of substance and alcohol use relative to youth who are not mentored (Raposa et al., 2019). Studies have found mentoring effective in preventing psychosocial problems, such as delinquent behavior (DuBois and Karcher, 2013). Despite the evidence on the benefits of formal mentoring, an estimated 9 million young people are growing up in under-resourced environments without the support of formal mentors (Bruce and Bridgeland, 2014).

In recent years, virtual mentoring has emerged as a promising way to expand the provision of mentoring (Andersen and Wellen, 2023). By engaging virtually, mentorship programs can mitigate the typical challenges of travel time and distance between mentor and mentee (Ensher, Heun, and Blanchard, 2003) and may even facilitate the development of rapport and trust (Ensher and Murphy, 1997; Miller and Griffiths, 2005).

In 2020, the U.S. Dream Academy (hereafter referred to as "Dream"), a longtime innovator in developing out-of-school-time programs and formal mentoring for young people, expanded its mentoring program to include a virtual option in six Learning Centers across the country. RAND researchers collaborated with Dream to evaluate the development and implementation of the mentoring program and the supplemental services offered. This brief illustrates how flexible programming, including the use of in-person, hybrid, and virtual mentoring approaches, allowed for the adaptation of supports to meet the specific needs of youth and families in their communities.

How Does Dream Work?

In the 2022–2023 school year, when the study was conducted, Dream operated Learning Centers with mentoring and after-school care programming in partnership with public schools in Baltimore, Maryland; Houston, Texas; Orlando, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Salt Lake City, Utah; and San Bernardino, California, engaging a total of 198 youths in mentoring. Students were from 6 years old to 18 years old, with an average age of 11. About 75 percent of students receiving mentoring were Black or African American, while 19 percent were Latinx. About 28 percent of mentored students had an incarcerated parent.

Addition of Virtual Mentoring

Dream had seen great benefits in its mentoring activities to students in its Learning Centers, but it pursued virtual mentoring as a means to scale, standardize, and extend its mentorship program. To support this vision, Dream won a grant in 2020 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to develop virtual and hybrid mentorship programs along with a common curriculum, adopt a platform and user interface, and put in place procedures to ensure student safety through mentor screening, session monitoring, and family engagement.

Dream's Adaptive Mentoring Model

Dream activities are rooted in what is known as the Developmental Relationships Framework (DRF). This framework, originally developed by the Search Institute,^[1] identifies five elements of powerful relationships in young people's lives: relationships that express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power, and expand possibilities.

As shown in the figure, Dream uses an adaptive mentoring model that provides opportunities for local tailoring and flexibility alongside strong national supports and management. The figure conceptualizes the program’s development and implementation through the lens of the Dynamic Adaptation Process (Aarons, Hurlburt, and Horwitz, 2011), which suggests that implementers can identify core components of an intervention and plan for adaptation in local implementation. This effort is depicted through the colored boxes at the top of the figure, which trace how an intervention moves iteratively through the exploration, preparation, implementation, and sustainment phases (Aarons, Hurlburt, and Horwitz, 2011).

The left side of the figure shows that the mentoring program is situated within a multi-level context, including school partnerships; national supports for program staffing, training, accountability, and funding; program capacity, such as staff, technology, and mentor supply; and student background characteristics and needs. In this setting, Dream Learning Centers develop mentoring supports, including a common curriculum, a centralized mentoring platform, and comprehensive training.

The center of the figure illustrates how Dream Learning Centers can make ad hoc adaptations to the model, adapting it to local strengths and needs. This aspect results in the provision of mentoring options, which range from fully in-person sessions to fully virtual sessions, as well as a hybrid of the two. Across the Learning Centers, mentoring is situated within a range of supports (e.g., after-school care, family engagement, homework help/tutoring, social and emotional learning programming). Together, these activities are expected to contribute to a variety of social, behavioral, and psychological benefits for students, their caregivers, and mentors.

NOTE: Green shading signifies the supplemental on-site supports that are offered by the Learning Centers.

This flow chart shows the Dream Mentoring Theory of Action as it moves through the different phases starting with the exploration phase and ending with the sustainment phase, with ongoing feedback throughout.

Exploration phase

Multi-level context

• System-level context
  • School partnerships
• Dream capacity
  • Staffing
  • Recruitment and screening
  • Monitoring/feedback
  • Funding
• Program capacity
  • Staffing
  • Technology
  • Mentor supply
• Student characteristics and needs

Preparation phase

Dream mentoring supports

• DreamJourney curriculum
• MentorCloud platform
• Comprehensive training

Implementation phase

ad hoc adaptation

• Virtual mentoring
• Hybrid mentoring
• In-person mentoring
• Site-specific supports
  • After-school care
  • Homework help
  • Social and emotional learning programming
  • Volunteer engagement
  • Family engagement
  • School embeddedness

Sustainment phase

Outcomes

• Students
  • Protective factor development
  • Risk factor reduction
  • Additional perceived benefits
• Caregivers
  • Positive parent-child relationship
  • Additional perceived benefits
• Staff/mentors
  • Additional perceived benefits

Dream Mentoring Supports

In line with the adaptive mentoring model, Dream leaders created a comprehensive mentoring curriculum, called DreamJourney, which was designed for Learning Centers to use with small-group or individual mentoring, in virtual, hybrid, or in-person settings. The curriculum has five modules, each consisting of four to eight lessons or activities (see Table 1 below).

To facilitate virtual mentoring and ensure safety and accountability, Dream adopted an online platform called MentorCloud and a supportive program software called Innovative Mentoring. This software provided all the infrastructure for mentoring, including a database of student and mentor information, interfaces for collecting registration information or surveys from caregivers, email and text communications, and video conference scheduling and management.

Dream's national team also developed a comprehensive training program available for mentors to complete online, at any time, with seven self-paced training modules. The mandatory formal training discusses mentoring, expectations, and information about the community where the Learning Center is located.

In addition, Dream changed how it structured training to ensure student safety in online mentoring relationships. For example, Dream augmented training to include such topics as advising mentors not to open or share their social media accounts with students. Dream used recording and transcription for all virtual sessions, and it built in a scanning function to automatically flag transcripts in which specific trigger words were used.

Adaptations Across Learning Centers

Each Learning Center was supported by two full-time staff, a center director, and a mentor coordinator, as well as a part-time program assistant (working directly with students in the after-school program) and an education specialist (a credentialed teacher supporting literacy work). Mentors for the Learning Centers were recruited from local colleges and universities, national organizations (e.g., Amway), and local organizations (e.g., churches, Girl Scouts organizations). Beyond these basic elements, each Learning Center took an individualized approach to mentoring, as suggested by the ad hoc adaptations component of the model shown above.

Mode of Delivery

With the addition of virtual mentoring, Learning Centers were able to offer varied modes of mentoring, including

• in-person: fully in-person mentoring, in which a mentor and mentee meet in person at the Learning Center for face-to-face sessions (available prior to adding the virtual option)
• hybrid: virtual mentoring with a mentee on site, meaning that a mentor and mentee log in online and the session takes place in the virtual platform, while the mentee is at the Learning Center with a staff person
• virtual: fully virtual mentoring, in which the mentor and mentee log online and the session takes place in the virtual platform with both a mentor and mentee joining from separate locations and not from a Learning Center.

There was quite a bit of variation across Learning Centers in terms of the modes of mentoring offered. For example, Learning Centers in Houston offered only in-person mentoring, while Philadelphia and San Bernardino Learning Centers provided only hybrid mentoring. Other Learning Centers offered a combination of types. During the study period, on average, students received eight mentoring sessions, but the number of sessions ranged from one to 35; each session was 1.3 hours on average, with a range from 30 minutes to 3.5 hours.

Mentoring can occur in group or one-on-one settings, with a wider variety of options possible through virtual mentoring. Learning Centers sometimes assigned multiple students, both in person and virtually, to a single mentor or multiple students and multiple mentors to a group setting. Dream leaders reported that the virtual environment led them to embrace more group mentoring, because this option was thought to make mentoring sessions more comfortable and facilitated rapport-building.

Virtual mentoring also helped with continued engagement and retention of mentors. Although, in the past, work trips or sick children sometimes would make it impossible for mentors to keep their commitments, virtual opportunities allow mentors to stay engaged.

Topics Covered

Across the Learning Centers, the most common topics of mentoring reported by students were their hopes, expectations, and goals (76 percent); friends (70 percent); and school/academics (67 percent). Almost half of student respondents also reported playing online games or discussing news and current events during mentoring sessions, which were likely used to build rapport. All but one Learning Center offered some kind of homework help or intensive tutoring.

Although Dream leaders intended the DreamJourney curriculum to help manage the challenges of coming up with activities or topics for virtual mentoring, its use varied across the Learning Centers. Four Learning Centers reported that they used the curriculum with fidelity at almost every session, with small adjustments in response to student needs. Others used the curriculum with specific groups of students (e.g., only with students in middle school or only for in-person group mentoring) or for specific occasions (e.g., "We do the curriculum on 'Fun Fridays' . . . twice a month").

Site-Specific Supports

Most Learning Centers also offered a wide variety of additional supports to mentoring. This effort often included providing after-school care, snacks and meals, social and emotional development activities, leadership development, sports and games, and other enrichment opportunities. Some Learning Centers organized activities and events, such as Black History Month celebrations, visits from first responders, trivia, and puzzles. At the time of this study, almost all of the Learning Centers reported hosting family nights at least twice a year.

"Village" Support to Families

All Learning Centers made efforts to engage caregivers and families, although most described challenges in doing so in the post-pandemic period. Across the Learning Centers, staff mentioned connecting caregivers with a variety of resources, such as food pantries, shelters, health clinics, mental health counseling resources, and summer care and camps for students.

Across about half of the Learning Centers, staff explicitly mentioned communicating to caregivers and families that they embraced the “village” responsibility and support model. That is, Dream staff noted that it is the responsibility of all the adults around a child to support that child. For caregivers, this idea was intended to communicate that Dream staff would also help to support the students and their families with wraparound supports.

In addition to make connections to resources, Learning Center leaders and staff also took on roles as informal mentors for all the students in their Learning Centers. That is, these permanent staff took great interest in students' lives and their families, and they were reportedly often a primary source of support when students experienced challenges.

Benefits and Trade-Offs to Virtual Mentoring

There were both benefits and trade-offs to virtual mentoring. One key benefit of virtual mentoring was the ability to recruit a larger number and broader variety of mentors, who were generally comfortable with virtual communication. Some students were excited to use computers and developed strong rapport with their mentors, while some staff appreciated sitting in on sessions or observing recordings to supervise mentoring discussions.

On the other hand, many students still wished that they could also meet with their mentors in person. In one student focus group, while some students described how they discussed "heart-to-heart topics" in virtual sessions with their mentors, most still wished that they could meet mentors in person. In the words of one student, "I don't like it online. It doesn't feel genuine." Staff noted that virtual mentoring was not a good fit for some students who struggled to sit still in front of a computer. Staff also reported some logistical issues, such as the need to set up the equipment and connections and to assist with log-in and troubleshooting.

Conclusion

During the evaluation period, mentoring itself varied substantially across and, to some extent, within Learning Centers. Nonetheless, on the whole, the evaluation findings painted a picture of the village of supports for young people provided by Dream programs, including mentoring, after-school care, social and emotional learning programming, extracurricular enrichment, family engagement, and community-based resources. Students benefited from social emotional, mental health, and academic support. Caregivers and families benefited from safety net help and advocacy. Mentors benefited from personal and professional development.

Dream still has its challenges. The researchers describe these issues in more detail in the full report, Expanding the Village of Support Through Virtual Mentoring, which also describes key opportunities for enhancing its mentoring programs.

Note

• [1] For more information about the DRF developed by the Search Institute, see its website (Search Institute, undated).

References

• Aarons, G. A., M. Hurlburt, and S. M. Horwitz, "Advancing a Conceptual Model of Evidence-Based Practice Implementation in Public Service Sectors," Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, Vol. 38, 2011.
• Andersen, Tia Stevens, and Hadley Wellen, "Being a Mentor in the Digital Era: An Exploratory Study of the Benefits Undergraduate Student Mentors Derived from Providing Virtual Mentoring to Youth,"Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 51, No. 7, 2023.
• Bruce, M., and J. Bridgeland, The Mentoring Effect: Young People's Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring, Civic Enterprises with Hart Research Associates, 2014.
• DuBois, D. L., and M. J. Karcher, eds., "Chapter 36: Youth Mentoring: Progress and Prospects for the 21st Century," in The Handbook of Youth Mentoring, SAGE Publications, 2013.
• Ensher, E. A., and S. E. Murphy, "Effects of Race, Gender, Perceived Similarity, and Contact on Mentor Relationships," Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 50, No. 3, 1997.
• Ensher, E. A., C. Heun, and A. Blanchard, "Online Mentoring and Computer-Mediated Communication: New Directions in Research," Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2003.
• Miller, H., and M. Griffiths, "E-Mentoring," in D. L. DuBois and M. J. Karcher, eds., Handbook of Youth Mentoring, SAGE Publications, 2005.
• Raposa, E. B., Jean Rhodes, Geert Jan J. M. Stams, Noel Card, Samantha Burton, Sarah Schwartz, Laura A. Yoviene Sykes, Stella Kanchewa, Janis Kupersmidt, and Saida Hussain, "The Effects of Youth Mentoring Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Outcome Studies," Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 48, No. 3, March 2019.
• Rhodes, J. E., "Improving Youth Mentoring Interventions Through Research-Based Practice," American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 41, Nos. 1–2, 2008.
• Search Institute, “Developmental Relationships Framework,” webpage, undated. As of August 29, 2024: https://searchinstitute.org/resources-hub/developmental-relationships-framework.

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Topics

• After-School Programs
• Community-Based Participatory Research
• Educational Program Evaluation
• Minority Students
• Nonformal Education
• Social and Emotional Learning
• Underserved Students