20 Years of Power Within
How Lakes High School Informed the Design of Sustainable Mentoring Systems
This year, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Power Within at Lakes High School; a breaking down the walls day designed specifically for high school freshmen and led entirely by student mentors.
For two decades, Lakes mentors have facilitated a full day of leadership, reflection, and connection for incoming students. What began as an intentional effort to support ninth graders through transition has become a defining tradition within the school community.
Reaching this milestone invites more than celebration. It invites reflection.
In honoring twenty years of Power Within, we also look back on the broader history of the Lakes partnership, a history marked by collaboration, refinement, and shared ownership. Lakes has not simply implemented Ignite’s framework; it has co-designed it. The school has served as a living laboratory where students, advisors, and leaders have worked together to examine a central question:
How do you build a mentoring system that endures beyond initial inspiration and shapes culture serves student development?
Over time, that question has shaped not only a single event, but an embedded leadership system designed for sustainability.
The Design Challenge: The Forgetting Curve
In 1885, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus introduced what is now known as the Forgetting Curve, demonstrating that without intentional reinforcement, individuals lose a significant portion of newly learned information within a short period of time.
In educational settings, this phenomenon is visible in predictable patterns:
- Assemblies that generate short-term enthusiasm but limited long-term change
- Kickoff events that create momentum without sustained structures
- Retreats that inspire reflection but lack follow-through
The issue is rarely the quality of the message.The challenge is durability.
Without systematic reinforcement, even meaningful experiences fade. Administrators recognized early that mentoring could not rely on isolated events. If it were to shape culture, they would need to invest in an embedded design.
From Programmatic Offering to Embedded System
Since 2000, Lakes High School has integrated mentoring directly into the structure of the school day, developing a comprehensive leadership system grounded in continuity, training, and applied practice. Leadership courses function as developmental pathways, and mentors are prepared through a clearly defined framework that includes supervision, reflection, and skill progression.
The model includes multi-year leadership pipelines, structured training with guided reflection, ongoing advisor coaching, student-informed feedback loops, and character development integrated into curriculum through a CTE Education Leadership pathway.
Central to this design is a credit-bearing Career and Technical Education (CTE) course utilizing the Ignite Leadership Curriculum. Co-designed with Lakes High School, the Education Leadership pathway formalizes mentoring within the academic schedule and awards credit for leadership development. Students engage in coursework aligned to high-demand workforce competencies — communication, collaboration, adaptability, critical thinking, and professional responsibility — while applying those competencies through sustained mentoring practice.
Mentoring operates as an applied learning experience within this structure. Students practice facilitation, reflection, adaptive communication, and peer support in live contexts. Instruction and implementation function together, positioning the classroom as both training ground and laboratory.
The centralized, credit-bearing design strengthens preparation across cohorts, reinforces leadership identity, and supports long-term cultural continuity. Over time, mentoring has become a durable component of the school’s leadership infrastructure, reinforcing identity formation, skill development, and shared responsibility.
Evidence of Durability: Culture, Attendance, and Academic Stability
Sustained systems are not measured by enthusiasm alone. They are reflected in culture indicators over time.
Across long-term Ignite implementation sites, including Lakes, schools report patterns that mirror what research predicts when belonging and peer connection are intentionally reinforced:
- Improved ninth-grade attendance stability
- Increased course pass rates among first-year students
- Reductions in behavior referrals during transition years
- Stronger student-reported sense of belonging
Research consistently identifies ninth grade as a pivotal predictor of graduation outcomes. Students who pass all freshman-year courses and maintain consistent attendance are significantly more likely to graduate on time. Near-peer mentoring, when embedded and reinforced, strengthens both academic monitoring and relational accountability.
At Lakes, mentoring is not positioned as an add-on to academic success. It functions as a structural support that reinforces it.
When leadership is embedded into the school schedule, reinforced weekly, and led by trained upperclassmen, the impact compounds over time. The outcome is not a spike, it’s stability. And stability is what outlasts the forgetting curve.
Students as Co-Designers of the Work
A distinguishing feature of the Lakes partnership has been the authentic inclusion of student voice in program refinement. Students have not simply participated in mentoring; they have helped shape how it functions.
Ryan – Executive Mentor, Special Education Lead
Ryan serves as an Executive Mentor overseeing work connected to the Special Education department. In this role, she has contributed to adapting lessons to better serve diverse learners, considering accessibility, differentiation, and inclusion.
Her engagement goes beyond delivery. She evaluates and refines instructional approaches. Through this process, mentoring has become a space where she practices educational design, reinforcing her aspiration to pursue a career in education.
In this context, leadership is not abstract. It is applied and developmental.
Austin – Sustaining Commitment Amid Opportunity
Austin, an Executive Mentor balancing a free college opportunity and state-level athletics, intentionally structured his academic schedule to remain engaged in mentoring.
His decision reflects a deeper outcome of sustained systems: mentoring becomes part of a student’s identity rather than an extracurricular activity. When students prioritize leadership commitments amid competing demands, it signals internalization.
Antonita – Development Across Years
Antonita began mentoring in seventh grade at Thomas Middle School and is now a junior at Lakes. Her experience illustrates the cumulative effect of a multi-year leadership pipeline.
Rather than encountering mentoring as a single-year intervention, she developed within a consistent structure that reinforced responsibility, character, and service across formative years.
This longitudinal exposure addresses the forgetting curve directly. Repetition, responsibility, and identity formation reinforce learning far more effectively than isolated inspiration.
The Role of Spark in Reinforcement and Retention
As Ignite’s design evolved, digital tools were incorporated to further address reinforcement. The expansion of Spark’s digital learning model has allowed Lakes to implement a flipped-learning approach:
- Introducing core concepts through short, focused pre-class videos
- Preserving in-person time for dialogue and application
- Revisiting core themes across multiple weeks
- Strengthening retention through layered exposure
This model does not replace relational mentoring; it strengthens it. By reducing advisor preparation demands, Spark enables advisors to concentrate on coaching and developmental conversations rather than content creation.
Intentional structure supports relational depth.
Lessons from Twenty Years of Implementation
The Lakes experience reinforces a central principle: mentoring endures when it is designed for memory.
Sustainable systems require:
- Integration into the master schedule
- Systematic mentor training
- Consistent supervision and coaching
- Reinforcement across time
- Structured student feedback
- Identity development rather than event-based engagement
Transformational outcomes rarely emerge from single experiences. They emerge from coherent systems applied consistently.
Beyond an Anniversary
Twenty years of Power Within at Lakes High School represents more than longevity. It provides evidence that student-led, advisor-supported, structurally embedded mentoring can influence school culture in measurable and lasting ways.
When mentoring is intentionally reinforced:
- Students internalize leadership identity
- Advisors are supported rather than overextended
- Culture shifts incrementally and sustainably
Under these conditions, the forgetting curve becomes less of a threat and more of a design consideration—one that can be addressed through structure, repetition, and shared ownership.
Lakes has demonstrated that when mentoring is embedded thoughtfully, it does not fade. It becomes foundational.
