When Students See What’s Possible:
How Newburyport is Growing a Culture of Mentoring
Sometimes the most powerful evidence that a school is doing something meaningful is not simply found in its data. It is found in what happens when other students see the work and decide, we want this too.
At Newburyport High School in Massachusetts, peer mentoring has grown from an effort to strengthen connection after the pandemic into an increasingly embedded student leadership system. Today, students are not only helping younger peers navigate high school, they are developing their own leadership skills, contributing to school culture, and showing neighboring schools what is possible when students are given meaningful opportunities to lead.
And perhaps one of the best examples of that impact can be found just down the road in Georgetown.
From Connection to a Student-Led System
Newburyport’s mentoring journey began with a challenge familiar to many schools. Coming out of the pandemic, educators saw students returning with different levels of connection to their school community. While many students were highly involved, others remained on the margins.
At the same time, Newburyport was working to bring its Portrait of a Graduate to life, particularly competencies like communication, collaboration, leadership, and self-awareness.
The question became: How do we create stronger relationships for younger students while giving older students authentic opportunities to practice the skills we say matter?
In partnership with Ignite Nation, Newburyport developed a structured near-peer mentoring system embedded within the school day. Upperclassmen are trained as mentors and Executive Mentors, with clearly defined leadership roles, monthly structured mentoring sessions, small-group facilitation, leadership curriculum, and opportunities for informal connection throughout the year.
During the 2025–26 school year alone, 179 freshmen were paired with trained student mentors.
As the program evolved, Newburyport took another important step: creating protected time within the academic schedule for Executive Mentors to develop their leadership skills. Through a train-the-trainer structure, their advisor models and facilitates content with Executive Mentors, Executive Mentors prepare and train the larger mentor team, and mentors ultimately facilitate experiences with freshmen.
Leadership isn’t simply discussed. Students practice it, teach it, and use it in service of other students.
What Happens When Students Are Trusted to Lead?
The data coming out of Newburyport provides an encouraging picture of what that practice can mean for students.
Among surveyed mentors:
- 85% reported increased confidence
- 81% reported growth in public speaking or facilitation
- 63% described seeing themselves as a leader
- 52% reported improvement in group leadership
- 78% observed freshmen becoming more comfortable and open
- 67% saw stronger connections developing across grade levels
- 44% reported freshmen seeking help outside of formal mentoring time
Teachers rated the overall effectiveness of the program 9.1 out of 10 and described watching mentors progress from delivering activities to actually facilitating groups, adapting in the moment, working alongside co-leaders, and maintaining student engagement.
Freshman feedback adds another layer. In an end-of-year survey of 122 freshmen, 89.4% reported joining at least one club, sport, or school activity. Students also described mentors helping them set goals, feel included, and navigate their first year of high school.
These numbers matter. But so does what sits underneath them.
Students are building relationships across grade levels. They are learning that leadership doesn’t require being the loudest person in the room. They are practicing how to communicate, adapt, facilitate, listen, and take responsibility for someone else’s experience.
And younger students are entering high school knowing there is already someone there who knows their name and wants them to succeed.
When One School Becomes a Showcase for Another
One of the most powerful parts of Newburyport’s story is that its impact is beginning to extend beyond its own school community.
At neighboring Georgetown High School, students participating in a school improvement class were challenged to think about how they could make their school stronger. Of the many directions they could have taken, the students chose peer mentoring.
Then, they had the opportunity to see what that idea could look like in action.
Georgetown students witnessed the Ignite mentoring model at Newburyport, seeing students their own age leading, facilitating, building relationships across grade levels, and taking real responsibility for strengthening their school community. What they saw gave their own idea a clearer path forward.
But the students didn’t stop at being inspired.
They brought the idea back to their superintendent and advocated for mentoring in their own school.
From there, the two neighboring schools came together. Georgetown students attended Ignite training alongside Newburyport mentors, learning with and from students who were already putting the model into practice.
There is something especially meaningful about that kind of growth. This wasn’t an initiative simply handed down to students by adults. Students identified an opportunity for school improvement, saw a model working in a neighboring community, and used their voices to advocate for bringing it home.
That is the power of student voice.
When students are given meaningful opportunities to contribute to their schools, they don’t just participate in change. They can become the reason it begins.
And when schools are willing to open their doors and share what is working, one group of student leaders can inspire the next.
The Next Chapter: Turning Leadership Experience Into Opportunity
As another school year begins, Newburyport’s mentors are gearing up once again to welcome incoming freshmen. For the students walking through the doors for orientation, these mentors can help make a new school feel a little smaller, more personal, and more connected from the very beginning.
But this year, the learning doesn’t stop with the freshmen.
Newburyport mentors will be hitting the books themselves.
Students will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of mentoring and leadership through Ignite’s Peer Mentoring & Leadership Practicum, connecting the work they are already doing in their school with evidence-based mentoring practices, leadership development, and future-ready skills.
Through the course, students study and practice skills including communication, relationship building, facilitation, academic success coaching, self-awareness, service-oriented leadership, and mentoring ethics. The experience is designed around Ignite’s Leadership Growth Cycle: Learn, Practice, Reflect, and Lead.
Students will also work toward MentorPRO Academy micro-credentials, developed through the research and expertise of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring. Certification topics include Building Strong Mentoring Relationships, Supportive Accountability, Resilience & Stress Management, Motivational Interviewing, and Managing Ethical Challenges in Mentoring.
The practicum goes beyond studying leadership in a classroom. Students apply what they learn through monthly Mentor-to-Mentee sessions, incoming student transition programs, collaboration with administrators, school culture initiatives, service-based committees, leadership portfolios, and a culminating capstone project.
Through an emerging concurrent-credit opportunity with the University of Massachusetts Boston, students may also have the opportunity to turn the leadership and mentoring work they are already doing into college credit.
It is an important next step in how we think about student leadership.
A student who volunteers to mentor a freshman isn’t just helping out. They are learning how to communicate across differences, build trust, facilitate groups, navigate challenges, collaborate with adults and peers, and take responsibility for the experience of another person.
Those are meaningful skills. And they deserve to be developed, practiced, and recognized.
Whether these students eventually pursue careers in education, medicine, engineering, business, public service, or something entirely different, the ability to communicate, collaborate, adapt, think critically, and lead with responsibility will travel with them.
More Than a Mentoring Program
Newburyport’s story is ultimately not about adding another program to a school.
It is about changing who gets to contribute to school improvement.
When schools identify a challenge, the instinct is often to ask what adults can build for students. Newburyport demonstrates the possibilities that emerge when we also ask:
What could students build with us?
The answer is visible throughout their school community.
A freshman walks into orientation and meets an upperclassman who can help them navigate what comes next.
A mentor discovers a leadership ability they didn’t know they had.
An Executive Mentor moves from participating in activities to facilitating, training, and leading others.
A student turns their mentoring experience into meaningful credentials and potentially college credit.
And a group of students from Georgetown sees what their peers are doing, returns to their own school, and says, we could do this too.
That is the kind of ripple effect we hope student leadership creates.
Because sometimes the best way to spread a good idea isn’t for adults to tell another school about it.
It’s to give students the opportunity to see what is possible, trust them with the voice to ask for it, and equip them to lead it forward.