Meaningful Mentors is a new club to FM high school. It was established last year by former FM student Taylor Ratliff with a focus on connection of students between schools and mental health. With the effect that mental health is having on students today, Meaningful Mentors continues to become increasingly helpful and needed.
Taylor Ratliff is a freshman in college at the University of Syracuse and is currently majoring in elementary education. Taylor started the club just last year, but it is already an amazing success for the FM district. She said, “We hold after school meetings once a month at Eagle Hill, and bring down high school mentors to help the middle schoolers play games, create crafts, learn, and further connect with one another.” Each monthly meeting is focused on a different topic/aspect of mental health and is a way of addressing mental health in a positive way.
This club is also a huge way of starting and furthering connections between students in the middle and high school. Taylor actually began this club with one of the main goals being to grow a stronger relationship between students across schools in FM. “I really wanted to create a space for both high school and middle school students to come together and have open discussion about mental health and its effects on the school experience.” Taylor has been a huge advocate of mental health awareness through this club.
Meaningful Mentors is a way of ending the stigma surrounding mental health, especially in younger students. “One of my main goals for starting this club was to increase awareness about anxiety, stress, depression, and all the hard things that can come with the transition of middle school to high school for students.” Through Taylor’s own experiences and through people around her, she has experienced so many different aspects of mental health affecting people and she understands the difficulties of it. “Especially coming out of Covid, with mental health disorders on the rise in young adults, I felt passionate about doing something to help. I wanted kids to be able to have another outlet and opportunity for expressing and sharing the things that are less commonly talked about, especially at this age, and at school,” Taylor said.
For Taylor, it was a fairly easy process to get this club up and running. “I was able to form a plan and generate enough research, awareness and communicate with teachers and staff to help me.” Obviously Taylor didn’t start this club on her own. She had the help of many teachers including her 7th grade math teacher at Eagle Hill, Ms Pomeroy. She also had help from Mrs. Murphy who was the Interim Assistant Principal last year at FM high school and Ms. Wheeler who is the Dean of Students at the high school. With these teachers backing her up, the club was much easier to start. “I had to fill out the HS club approval request, as well as send lots of approval emails to the counselors and principal Mrs. McCrystal at Eagle Hill.” After a long period of emails back and forth with Eagle Hill the club was approved by both schools.
One of the hardest parts of starting a club is getting people to join it. “It took lots of advertising to get the middle school kids to come, but we had a nice big group of excited high school mentors and that made me happy!” Taylor worked with other high school students to spread the club to the middle school. Since Taylor was a senior, it was especially important for her to find a good group of high schoolers who could continue the club in years to come.
As most people know, a big part of middle school is being “too cool for school.” When discussing middle schoolers, Taylor has a great perspective on things. “I think middle school is a tricky age, and that’s exactly why I chose to create this club there and for those students. They can have a particularly hard time thinking that things like this are “cool” so the convincing of that population to come and participate is what I found the most trouble with.”
After a few meetings Taylor was able to gain solid members from the middle school for Meaningful Mentors. “Thankfully, I was able to get a lovely group of consistent students, and they were able to bring friends and connect as they told their friends about it and the year went on.” This created the foundation for the club to continue. The goal is for this cycle to continue this year, making the club even bigger.
For Taylor, this club was a big part of her high school experience last year. It may seem like a burden, but for Taylor it’s a way of seeing her work pay off and help kids. “My favorite part of this club is seeing the students interact with one another and being able to create a bond with the regular attendees. I loved watching as the high schoolers greeted and talked with the middle schoolers as they walked in. The busy chatter of all the excited kids in one room made it all worth it to me.”
Even though Taylor is no longer at FM to run the club, she still cares deeply about it. This year she passed the club down to Phoebe Koehne, a current senior at FM High School. “I know passing it down to Phoebe was a great choice, and she will continue to create and share more opportunities for the club and its members in both schools.”
Even without physically being at the club meetings, Taylor will always be considered part of the Meaningful Mentors family. She can not wait to watch the club grow this year. “I would like to see the club continue to meet and expand across all schools and even become more of a curriculum/ program than just a student run club. I just hope more people get to know about and utilize it as the years go on.”
The club will run for as long as students allow it to keep running. Taylor said, “If they know how the club works, they will hopefully feel compelled to keep it alive for years to come.” If anyone is interested in helping spread any of the messages Meaningful Mentors represents, they should reach out to Phoebe Koehne for more details or check daily announcements for future meetings.
