New coordinator taking mentoring program into ‘22

By Jan Schultz
The Imperial Republican
    Sheila Stromberger knows TeamMates inside and out.
    As the new program coordinator for the Chase County Schools chapter, she is ready to get started in her new role.
    Members of the TeamMates board of directors approved her appointment recently after the CCS board of education gave its nod to the revamped coordinator’s position, and also agreed to pay Stromberger’s salary for the job.
    Previously, CCS guidance counselors handled the program coordinator position.
    However, Trent Herbert and Cathy Hanna have wanted to back out of the responsibilities for some time, allowing them to dedicate more of their school day to their guidance positions.
    Stromberger as coordinator became a perfect fit, although it’s been a process interrupted by COVID-19. The board has been working on transitioning to a new coordinator for more than two years, right before COVID hit.
    Chris Lee, TeamMates board president, said they are very excited with Stromberger’s willingness to serve in the position.
    “We are so glad she has stepped up,” Lee said.
    “She already knows a lot about the TeamMates program and that’s a big plus. We trust her,” he added.
    Stromberger was the board’s first president when it organized TeamMates the middle of the 2014-15 school year and served in that position for three years, staying on a fourth year as a board member.
    She’s already been through the TeamMates training the summer before it organized here, but will go through its online version again starting next week, she said.
    Stromberger said she does have some goals in mind—first of all to get all of the matches meeting again, after being displaced for many months due to COVID.
    “The school was shut down for a time, then there was a period of time when there were no visitors allowed at the school,” she recalled.
    That caused a lot of missed meetings between mentors and their young mentees.
    “So, some of our matches have had trouble reconnecting. I’d like to see them reconnect and rebuild” their relationships, she said.
    After that’s accomplished, she said she’d like to meet with the board and develop strategies for increasing Chase County’s matches.
    Right now, CCS has 52 matches. Some on the board have said they’d like to see that grow to 100.
    Stromberger said smaller communities have bigger match numbers than CCS.
    Hershey, for example, has 118 matches while Perkins County is at 62.
    “So, we can do better. We need to do better,” she said.
    Locally, TeamMates is always looking for adults willing to be mentors, especially men, she said.
    “There are a lot of young boys at CCS who want matches,” she said.

    She and board members are hoping more men will step forward.
    It’s a good program, she said, which can be seen by some of its statistics on improved grades, attendance and discipline among the youngsters involved.
    The goal is for matches to get together 20 times during the school year, and most of the pairs meet during lunch hour for 35-40 minutes, she noted.
    As the program coordinator, Stromberger’s duties will be many.
    She’ll coordinate new matches, pairing up the mentor with a mentee for their meetings, and along with that, recruit mentors.
    She will be the TeamMates representative at school and in the community, and make sure the local program is aligned with TeamMates’ policies and procedures.
    Other duties include collaborating with the TeamMates board on goals, as well as communicating with the regional coordinator. That person, Janae Solomon, has a tie to this area. She grew up in Wauneta as Janae Harris.
    One other important duty will be collecting data on mentees’ number of visits with their mentors, grades in their CCS classes, attendance and disciplinary records.
    Stromberger said collecting that school data makes TeamMates different from other mentoring programs.
    “That’s so they can study how those areas are improving,” she said.
    And, the research shows TeamMates is having success.
    Commencement in spring 2022 at CCS will mark an important milestone, too, Stromberger said.
    This year’s seniors were fifth graders when TeamMates began here, and they will be the first graduates in the program. Several of the 2022 CCS class have remained in TeamMates since fifth grade, she noted.
    One of the goals when the chapter started at CCS was to raise funds to give a senior scholarship to participants.
    A member of the Class of 2022 will be receiving that scholarship, she said.