By Bruce Barton

Khristopher Sandifer was a talented, but unfocused student at Alta Vista High School. He remembers entering into a mentoring program just to humor his counselor. The decision ended up changing his life.

Sandifer was 17 when his counselor matched him with adult mentor Alan Price. Both have interests in photography. Their relationship began gradually - first a conversation over pizza, then work on photography projects. A friendship blossomed, as Price became the kind of adult influence Sandifer never had: one who was there to help but never preached, one who met with Sandifer on common, equal ground; one who challenged Sandifer to challenge himself.

Sandifer recalled his first impression: “Mr. Price is so laid back. He said, ‘Let’s go get pizza.’ I said to myself, ‘He’s doing something I like.’”

They went on photo shoots together, Sandifer picking up tips from his mentor. Price’s influence resulted in Sandifer applying himself, leading to a host of photo awards.

“He really made me a leader,” said Sandifer, now a 19-year-old student at the San Francisco Academy of Arts.

“You need to push to be successful,” Price said. “Khris seems ready to do that.”

Sandifer and Price’s experiences came through a program called Partners For New Generations, now in its fifth year. The program, in a variety of ways, connects adult mentors with teens having trouble adjusting to everyday life.

The program, begun in 1996 as an outreach effort of the Rotary Club of Los Altos, has grown to 40 mentors matched with students at Alta Vista, a continuation school for students having trouble adjusting. Now Partners supporters are looking to expand the program further, armed with a $160,000, three-year grant awarded in September by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The money will allow the program to hire coordinators at Los Altos and Mountain View high schools where Partners plans to expand in 2003.

“By Jan. 1, our goal is to get 30-50 new mentors,” said Bob Adams, who has led the program’s expansion over the past four years.

Rotarian and former Los Altos mayor Marge Bruno started Partners In Education as a tutoring program at the elementary school level in 1996. Adams added high school mentoring to the program the following year. Options such as “Out To Lunch” and noontime basketball sessions offered a variety of ways for mentors and students to bond.

“The need is really substantial,” Adams said, pointing out that students don’t have to have attendance problems, poor families or criminal behavior to benefit from the program.

“We want a very diverse population, any student from any walk of life, a student who maybe needs a friend,” said Hinda Weber, who oversees the program through the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District. “The fact that an adult is there to listen to them without judging them is invaluable.”

Supporters said expansion to Los Altos and Mountain View highs reflects Partners’ attempts to reach out to the rest of the high school population that may have more subtle, underlying issues.

You don’t have to have a degree in psychology to qualify as a mentor. Those interested in helping and working with youth are fair game. Candidates go through a brief training period, Weber said. Students are encouraged, but not forced to enlist in Partners.

“We talk to (mentors) about adolescence,” she said. “Most (students) have walls up already, they have defense mechanisms. They are not going to warm up right away. We get them to ask simple questions you would normally have in a conversation. We give them a list of things they could do with them besides just lunch.”

Mentors must also go through a DMV clearance and fingerprinting reflecting state and district requirements. They’re expected to spend at least two 90-minute sessions per month with their partners.

Students are asked to take a pre-evaluation or “self-esteem” inventory, and at the end of the year, report on how they felt about the program. “We look at GPAs and attendance at the beginning versus the end of the year,” Weber said.

Adams said ideal mentors are “patient, good listeners and being able to open up avenues of conversation with a student.”

The program has worked wonders since its inception. Alta Vista, once thought of as a place to house troubled students, is seeing record numbers graduating and going on to college. “In the past at Shoreline (High School, Alta Vista’s former name), we didn’t see this,” Weber said.

Current mentors are enthused about the transformation they saw in their student partners.

Gene Coussens found one partner who was interested in flying airplanes. The student’s father was an airline pilot. “That seems to be a key in mentoring,” he said. “Find out what they want to be.”

Coussens took his partner flying and had him take the controls. “He was able to take off and just about land - the first time,” Coussens said.

Flying gave the boy confidence. He went to live with his dad. At first, his father resisted, but the boy found the courage to convince his dad to take him in.

“For only one hour in an airplane,” Coussens said, “you turn his whole life around.”

Mentor Ed Sox noticed a change in his partner’s goals.

“When we started out, he was talking about being a cook’s helper. Now he’s going to college.”

The issues to overcome are not easy - broken families, teen pregnancy, drug abuse. But mentors are encouraged to have patience. More often than not, they reap progress, sometimes in unexpected ways. For one of Adams’ students, change reared itself when the student said he enjoyed being with his family. This was from a 16-year-old young man who had done drugs since eighth grade and preferred hanging out with friends to being at home.

Adams and other mentors noted their first students from two years back or more will call them from time to time, as any friend would.

Sox said sometimes mentors can be a sounding board when parents can’t be due to reinforced, negative behaviors. His student was able to talk to Sox about a problem before confronting his parents. “Just by talking to another adult, he talked to his parents to resolve the situation,” Sox said.

Why get involved in helping troubled students?

For Sox, it was wanting to get a better understanding of today’s youth. “A lot of adults look at high school kids as a breed of people they can’t communicate with,” he said.

Mary Marley’s reasons were similar. “I have no children of my own. I was looking for focus for my own volunteer efforts. I wanted to work with teen-agers and talk adult to adult. Also, for me, I wanted to understand - what are the issues?”

Mentors stressed that the program does not carry an agenda; it emphasizes friendship and being available when students need them.

“The nonagenda is one of the things that makes it work,” Sox said. “It starts with the child wanting a mentor. This is mentoring-lite. It’s not like a Big Brother program.”

Marley stressed Partners is for girls as well as boys and noted the enrollment is divided up almost evenly between girls and boys.

Bruno, who started the initial tutoring program, is astounded at the growth of Partners For New Generations. “I think it’s wonderful. It’s doing so much more than any of us envisioned,” she said. “This is now beyond Rotary.”

“I’m absolutely convinced (Partners) may be the single most important intervention in their lives,” said Rich Fischer, superintendent of the high school district. Fischer, also in the Rotary Club, has partnered with four students.

“There’s tremendous satisfaction when the student begins to focus on what they might achieve,” Fischer said. “I’m confident there are hundreds and hundreds of people who can help out.”

The next mentoring training session is scheduled for Jan. 14 in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board room. To find out more about Partners For New Generations, call 949-0828, ext. 4, or e-mail: