Mentoring Program Gives Girls Safe Place to Talk about Life
February 15, 2018
Joy Harris visits Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy in Chicago once a week to talk to teenage girls about what’s on their minds – everything from dating to making friends to saving money.
“I want us to talk about topics that interest them so that they can learn life skills,” says Joy, who serves as a life coach in the school’s Life Coaches Mentoring Program.
“I tell the girls that whatever we discuss stays within our group. I consider myself a big sister who has life experiences that I want to share with them.”
Joy, a work control coordinator at ComEd, has been mentoring the school’s teen girls since ComEd started the program in 2011. ComEd created the first Life Coaches Mentoring Program with male students in 2009.
Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy is a campus of the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago. The school, which opened in 2007, was named for former Exelon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Rowe and his wife Jeanne and former ComEd Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank M. Clark and his wife Vera. ComEd and Exelon support many of the school’s programs.
Check out Joy and her students in the video.
