Blue Cross & Blue Shield employers mentor middle school students
Reprinted with permission from Minnesota Business Partnership
Each fall, after students have settled into the new school year, Eric Schmidt and Paul Lyon sit down to compare notes. Eric is a classroom teacher and enhanced learning coordinator at Dakota Hills Middle School in Eagan. Paul is director of employee development, relations and selection at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Together, they coordinate a successful e-mentoring program that pairs 30 Blue Cross employees with eighth-graders at Dakota Hills. Since its inception in the 2000-2001 school year, the program has matched more than 225 students with Blue Cross and Blue Shield employees.
Eric creates the curriculum and manages the program at the school. Paul recruits his co-workers to participate and serves as a mentor himself. Together, they match adults with students, train new volunteers and host the “meet your mentor” events.
Through the program, students pose questions to their mentors relating to topics in the professional world such as business and e-mail etiquette, attitude, determination, perseverance, punctuality, filling out a job application and interviewing skills. The mentors respond with answers that reflect not only their job knowledge but also their experience in the workplace.
A highlight for both students and mentors occurs when students visit Blue Cross early in the year to meet their mentors. The program concludes each spring with the mentors travel to Dakota Hills, where the students put on a creative presentation that shows what they learned during the course of the program.
In September, Paul received the 2007 Connecting with Youth Award from the Minnesota Business Partnership and the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota for his commitment to youth mentoring at work and in his personal life. “Mentoring provides an opportunity to share one’s experiences and to pass along the insights that others have taken the time to give you,” Paul said. “It is very rewarding to see youth I have mentored succeed in their personal life and work. I frequently feel that I receive more in return than what I have given.”
