Mentoring–A Beautifully Rewarding Relationship

Her name is Gabby and she and I have been friends since she entered the sixth grade at Our Lady Queen of Angels School (OLQA) on 112th Street in East Harlem. That was seven years ago.

I had volunteered to be a mentor to middle school girls at the school and the principal had selected a group of five girls. At our first meeting, the girls – Gabby, Tanasia, Lani, Jade and Kaylin – were excited to share information about themselves: their birthdays, details about their families and countries of origin as well as their career aspirations, that included veterinarian, lawyer, fashion designer, teacher, chef, actress and singer. Not surprisingly, their twelve-year-old imaginations were uninhibited.

 “We want to be a club,” they told me at our second meeting and over the next month they came up with their name. “We’re the Pink Panthers. We all like pink.” “And why panthers,” I asked, wondering what they might know of Peter Sellars and Inspector Jacques Clouseau. They had their answer – “Because we’re hunters, trying to get the best grades and education, so we can have the careers we want.” Not a bad way to start.

As for our club motto, we settled on one that was influenced by the words of Cardinal Dolan, as he reminisced on coming to New York in 2009, during the Great Recession, and being informed of the enormity of the financial crisis facing parochial schools in the city and its boroughs.

Dare to hope, promise and dream. To this day, every Pink Panther meeting begins and ends with that invocation as we all hold hands.

For ninety minutes each month during that first year, five girls and I would explore ideas, discuss politics, share passions, celebrate each other’s birthdays and, yes, divulge grades and even feelings about teachers. It was always a safe space – what was said in that room stayed in that room. And when the school year came to an end in mid-June, the girls and I went to a bookstore where, with the help of the talented staff, each one selected her own three “summer reads.”  They ranged from romance to science fiction, from biography to poetry and even horror. The Pink Panthers were reading and that’s what mattered.

Extemporaneous speaking was the focus of the seventh-grade mentoring sessions, and within a few months, the girls, at first with the help of note cards and soon on their own, gained comfort with the sound of their own voices, with their ability to engage an audience, to smile, to make eye contact and, before long, to speak in fluent sentences without notes.

By the time the Pink Panthers were entering the eighth grade, most of them were far taller than I. It was then that Gabby and I developed a strong and trusting bond, as she sought my advice on which Catholic  high schools to apply to. It was a delicate situation because the decision was most assuredly not mine, nor even Gabby’s – it was her mother who had to decide. But I could be helpful by sharing information – planting seeds, as it were, with insights and suggestions. A few blocks south of OLQA was a Jesuit co-educational high school, Cristo Rey. Co-founded by Father Joe Parkes, a Jesuit educator whom I had known for a number of years, it set a high bar for education and was tuition-free for those who were accepted. The funding came from corporations around the city, each of which committed to underwrite one (or more) students and in addition agreed to provide an office job to the student one day a week. This unusual educational program entailed a rigorous four-day curriculum and required serious dedication on the part of the students. Using her impressive powers of persuasion, Gabby convinced her mother to allow her to attend when she was accepted.

 For the last four years, including a year and a half of at-home and hybrid education during the COVID pandemic, Gabby was not only a Dean’s List scholar, but she also volunteered to spend time with the second class of Pink Panthers, sharing with them both the advantages as well as the rigors of a Cristo Rey education. Speaking extemporaneously, she was both convincing and encouraging.

A few weeks ago, Gabby graduated from Cristo Rey, armed with a full scholarship – tuition, room and board – to St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York. To earn the spending money she would need, she worked both last summer and again this year at Anchor Health Initiative, a primary and specialty health care company that serves the needs of the LGBTQ community in Connecticut. That work dovetails wonderfully with her plan to major in psychology, with a long-term goal of becoming a psychiatrist, a long leap from her sixth-grade career aspiration of being either a singer, an actor or a fashion designer. Those activities, in particular the passion for sketching, have become avocations.  

I had lunch with Gabby recently to celebrate her graduation (which sadly I could not attend because of COVID precautions). With her college finances secure, she was excited about two things – getting her driver’s license and voting in the mayoral primary in New York City. During the 2020 presidential election season, she had expressed disappointment that her eighteenth birthday would fall on November 5th, one day too late to vote, so this year’s primary was to be her first time at the polls. She explained why she was voting for Eric Adams – she was impressed with his concern for the environment and his pragmatic approach to problem-solving, in particular as it related to the highly charged issues regarding policing. She was fully conversant with New York’s “ranked-choice voting,” a  complex attempt to, among other things, eliminate the need for a runoff vote. Tallying the vote was a long process, but the announcement was made this past Tuesday that Eric Adams is the official Democratic candidate. I congratulated her for the part she played.

Gabby just texted me – “Good morning, Mrs. Chadwick. I just wanted to share the wonderful news with you that I passed my driving test and am getting my license.”