The Mentor Center

Welcome back to school, everyone!!

We hope you had a fantastic first day.

While The Mentor Center is not open (yet), it was great to see all the pictures of students getting started.

We know you have a great year ahead!

We cannot let the year end without expressing deep and heartfelt appreciation for our many community partners. Over the years, there are organizations that stepped up to help students in so many ways- providing food, bringing fun programs, facilitating important conversations, teaching valuable skills, donating snacks or games. When we asked, you came through!

You truly helped to make the Mentor Center a resource hub for students to access basic needs and have a safe space to explore new interests and make friends. The Mentor Center would not have been what is came to be without you! Thank you all so much!

The school year and our summer session have come to an end. Many of you have learned that the Mentor Center does not have a clear future for next year. Thank you for the words of support and encouragement as well as the stories you have shared about what the Mentor Center has meant to you and your students. Those are our favorite. We wish we had a better answer now, and we hope to have one soon.

When we first walked through the space that has been the Mentor Center in early 2021, it had remnants of the clinic that used to be here-- hospital beds, blood pressure cuffs, PPE. As we cleared out our things this week (we'll need to move anyway, regardless of anything else), it seems that the next person that walks through may find the last vestiges of what was here for the last three and half years-- a cup of markers, a poster about study room rules, a lost UNO card, a mural that states boldly "good things happen here".

This was a place loved and held by children and the caring adults that served them.

We saw magic here, and even if we won't be HERE, the Mentor Center has all the hope that we will be SOMEWHERE. Even if it's just in the stories we cherish. Wherever that is and whatever that looks like, thank you all for magic.

Have a fantastic summer. We are SO GLAD you were here.

The Mentor Center has two more days for the 2023-2024 school year!

We've had an incredible time with students this year. From helping them through challenging academics to learning about setting boundaries within friendships, from the basketball court to the community learning garden, from taste-testing new foods to sharing our sources of strength...

It has been eventful and a joy.

What a fantastic new feature on campus!! A true connected community project.

Thanks to the GRO.UND team for having Mentor Center students out to help put this together!

Tomorrow evening!

The Mentor Center will be at the garden helping this afternoon.

Gro.UND Learning Garden is having its ribbon cutting event on Tuesday, June 18th from 5-6pm. Event activities include a ribbon cutting, a story walk, learning in the garden and nature-based activities, a Poet Laureate will be reading, and the Little Red Reading Bus will be there! The event is family oriented and open to the public.

One more week of the Mentor Center for this year. We would love for you to pop by!

Sign up for next week here: https://forms.gle/A7EGwSD6ospsMZQN7

This was a fun, new activity yesterday!! Emma led students in an activity about mental health involving LEGO... and robots!

The Mentor Center has one more week for June. We'll be closed for the rest of the summer.

Sign up here: https://forms.gle/rS4zRDsZAQP2xaLR7

We're visiting the garden tomorrow! This June, Mentor Center students have been helping Dr. Josh and the gro.UND Fellows to plants a pollinator garden at the Community Learning Gardens on campus.

We've been having such fantastic weather. We can't wait to get back outside and get our hands dirty!

Sign up here to attend the Mentor Center: https://forms.gle/A7EGwSD6ospsMZQN7

Speaking of the Community Learning Gardens, the unveiling of the first Learning Garden and Storywalk in Grand Forks will be next Tuesday, June 18. Enjoy activities together from 5-6 pm!

Learn more about the work of the garden team here: https://www.learninggardens.org/

One of our activities yesterday was making DIY Body Scrubs. We also played soccer and spent time team-building and solving clues for a Breakout Box challenge!

We have a full calendar for the rest of this week and the next!

Check the calendar and sign up to attend here:
https://www.gfschools.org/departments/mentor-center-program/calendar