Catholic school's mentorship program helps students become 'best version of themselves'

STONEHAM, Mass. (OSV News) -- "Middle school is pretty challenging," says Courtney Finocchiaro, the art teacher at St. Patrick School in Stoneham.

She should know. As a member of St. Patrick's middle school mentorship program, new for the 2024-25 school year, she directly hears from students about the academic and social pressures they face.

"Grades are important, and being an honor roll student is great, and having straight As," Finocchiaro told The Pilot when a reporter with the Boston archdiocesan news outlet visited the school Dec. 12. "But also just helping them develop and grow individually" is important too, she said. "Teaching them compassion, teaching them how to be a little bit more independent, I think, is just as important as getting a good grade."

St. Patrick School has 250 students from pre-K to eighth grade. Once a month, St. Patrick's 54 middle school students meet with a staff mentor for 30 minutes to discuss their spiritual, intellectual, moral and physical formation.

"We realized that we wanted Catholic education to be a deeply personal, individualized experience for the students," assistant principal Nick Antonacci told The Pilot, adding: "It's very personalized to the student. It's highly focused on the student right in front of us. So every mentoring conversation is going to look a little bit different."

The mentors also regularly communicate with the parents, asking them what their goals are for their children and keeping them updated on their children's progress.

"We know that everything they do in school and mentoring really shapes who they are," Antonacci said, "and it helps them become the best version of themselves, not only here at school, but also at home."

Antonacci is also a mentor. One of his mentees is seventh grader Luke Kraft, who said that having a mentor has helped him grow as a person.

"It really lets you get a perspective from somebody who understands some different things better than you, such as mental welfare, faith, academics," he told The Pilot, adding: "You can say, 'Hey, I don't need to have amazing grades to be a good son, to be a good grandson.'"

Mentor Michael Bianco, who teaches middle school social studies and eighth-grade religion, said that students frequently talk about the pressure they feel to get good grades.

"There's a lot of stress that I find amongst all of my mentees about particularly grades and striving to be perfect," he told The Pilot. "And, you know, having nothing less than perfection. And part of our conversations is, it's OK to make mistakes. It's OK to be human and to work hard, however, to not make your entire life about what shows up on a gradebook."

Sixth grader Brooke Geraghty, one of Finocchario's mentees, has noticed that everyone in her class wants to be perfect. If they get onto "Second Honor Roll," they grow upset because they didn't make it onto "First Honor Roll."

"I think they're right on about how the students vision their priorities, and how we tear ourselves down," she said of the mentors.

She told The Pilot that mentorship has been "a great experience" for her.

"Any issues I have or need to get off of my mind, like friends or parents, it's easier to (speak to) a teacher that can understand what you're going through and give you new ideas of how to work around those struggles," she said.

Whenever stress "takes over" in the life of seventh grader Kennedy Sherrick, she turns to her mentor, guidance counselor Alexis Viering.

"I talk to her very often, and she's really helpful," Kennedy told The Pilot. "I can tell her literally anything, and she knows how to calm me down or deal with it in a way that will least upset me, because she knows me very well."

Unlike many things in education, mentoring is not measured by numbers. Instead, the school checks in with students to see how they're doing.

"I think it's really great to have something that you're just focused on, the human soul that's in front of you, the mentor and the mentee relationship," Antonacci said.

Bianco said that as a mentor, he learns things about his students that he never knew.

"It gives opportunities to grow for both the mentee and the mentor," he said. "As a mentor, you're learning how to build a different kind of relationship with a student, one that's not in a classroom setting, but in a different sphere."

Getting a more in-depth look at his students inspires him.

"It's awesome to see a different side of students than you normally see," he said. "They have a different sort of attitude when they're away from class. And you see who they are fully as a person and as a soul."