Eye to Eye by C.W.

Eye to Eye is a program which just started this year, had it been going throughout all of my high school years I would’ve done it each and every one of them. Eye to Eye is where High School students with learning disabilities go to Middle Schools and help students who also have learning disabilities all over the country. All the High School students are mentors for each Middle School students, mentee.  The mentors and mentees were paired up based on our learning disabilities, for me ADHD, for other dyslexia, ADD etc. This program is amazing in so many ways, and has meant so much to me personally.

My goal as a mentor to my 8th grader Alexandra, is to help her learn how to get through Highschool with ADHD. I remember my first two years of high school; I really struggled with my organization, and keeping up with so many tasks that at one point I felt I was drowning in them. My goal is to help Alexandra so she won’t ever have to feel this way. I finally got the jist of things my junior year, and achieved getting a 4.0 GPA. My other job as being a mentor include teaching Alex about the accommodations she has available to her, and to teach her that it’s okay to ask for them. I know that extra time on Math and French tests always made a huge difference to my grades. She will be going to Fairview next year, and my hope for her is to come to peace and to be proud of her LD rather than keeping it from her friends and not telling them she is in the program. She told me she was embarrassed, and I want her to feel like it’s cool, simply because she is. I want her to see how ADHD can truly be a gift, we are so open to our imaginations making us extremely creative and a bunch of other things. I think that by going to eye to eye every week that I make a difference.

The way Eye to Eye works is every week we have a new project, which we either help the mentees work on their goals and to come up with ways to achieve them, doing art projects that help them decide on the best study environment for them, helping them learn about what accommodations they are entitled to, and teaching them to be, “LD/ADHD proud to be!”