Promoting Positive Youth Development Through Mentoring in Alternative Education

This Program and Practice article provides a comprehensive overview of a university-school mentoring program specifically designed to address the school-to-prison pipeline by supporting youth in a disciplinary alternative school setting. The purpose of this article is to offer a detailed description of the program’s structure, components, and implementation strategies, with the goal of providing practitioners with a replicable model that can be adapted for use in similar school environments. This program matches undergraduate students with high school youth removed from traditional schools due to behavioral or justice-related challenges. Grounded in a strengths-based framework, the intervention incorporates a structured mentor training curriculum, an intentional matching process, and a weekly semi-structured mentoring model that combines group lessons on life skills with one-on-one support. Preliminary findings from interviews with student participants suggest high levels of satisfaction and relational support. All respondents reported that their mentors listened when they had concerns and celebrated their successes, while most indicated trust and comfort in the mentoring relationship. These early results point to the promise of structured, time-limited mentoring in alternative education contexts as a relational intervention to counteract the effects of exclusionary discipline. The article offers practical guidance for implementing similar programs and discusses the broader implications for practice and future research.