The Literary Arts College Essay Exchange (CEE) pairs high school juniors and seniors with volunteer mentors to work on their college application essays. A majority of the students served are first-generation applicants to college. Volunteer mentors come from all walks of life and share a dedication to positively impacting the lives of young people. Literary Arts provides training and guiding documents to prepare mentors to work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds.
Literary Arts’ Youth Programs co-created CEE with Susan Bartley, an award-winning teacher at Franklin High School, in 2010. In the program’s first year, Literary Arts trained 34 volunteers to work at an after-school session at Franklin. The session was a powerful, positive experience for everyone involved. In 2019, local companies The Standard and Wieden+Kennedy hosted sessions where students received mentorship, learned about their job fields and toured their offices. The program has steadily expanded and now serves around 250 students annually.
Mentors travel to high schools to participate in one-on-one mentoring sessions with students who bring essays in a variety of stages. Some bring completed essays that just need polishing while it is more common for students to be in the brainstorming or first draft stage of writing. Grammar and punctuation are not the focus; instead, mentors are asked to be thoughtful, active listeners and encourage each student to present their best selves on the page since the most important part of a college essay is illustrating the student’s unique story.
Volunteer mentors are paired with a student (or two, depending on turnout of both mentors and mentees) and can expect to spend approximately 50-90 minutes per session, depending on the length of the class period. New mentors are required to attend a training, lasting approximately 30 minutes. Mentoring sessions are held at high schools so volunteers need to take travel time into account.
The first step to become a mentor is to register with Literary Arts’ volunteer management system cohort of volunteers. Literary Arts coordinates with teachers at the beginning of each semester to confirm dates and times of sessions, then reaches out to potential and returning volunteers with the list of mentoring sessions. Most spring sessions take place in late April and May.
New volunteers are required to fill out a registration form, attend a training and undergo a volunteer background check with Portland Public Schools. The background check is done at no charge to the volunteer and lasts for three years. Mentors from a wide range of cultural and professional backgrounds are needed. About half of the students the program works with are first-generation applicants to college.
Find a link to apply at literary-arts.org under the Programs tab.