Project Eye-to-Eye brings kids and mentors together
By Chloe McConnell
The Miscellany News, Vassar College
February 24, 2010

Anisa Kamlani '11 arrived at the Project Eye-to-Eye mentoring program to find that her mentee shared her passion for designing shoes. "Like every student, if I really want to avoid my homework, I can find just about anything to help me," she explained. "My latest and greatest procrastination technique is making custom shoes. On Wednesday, I showed up at Oakwood [Friends School] only to have my very excited mentee exclaim, ‘Anisa! You have to see these awesome shoes I just designed!' Good to know he and I share a favorite procrastination technique."

Project Eye-to-Eye, a national non-profit organization, creates a forum that brings students with learning disabilities together. Pairing university and high school student mentors with younger children, the program seeks to empower students with learning disabilities and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to find success. As tutors, role models and friends, the older students help boost their mentees' self-esteem by providing positive support and discussing learning styles. Jonathan Mooney and David Flink, both individuals with learning disabilities, started the program while they were students at Brown University in the late 1990s. It took seven years to build the program into its current form with 26 Chapters located in 14 states. "In 1997, this idea occurred; it was really a very simple idea," Flink, now Executive Director of Project Eye-to-Eye, said in a telephone interview. "It very much built out of my experiences and other students who I met a Brown with learning disabilities, and we were all shocked that we had made it to college."

In 2002, co-founder Mooney wrote Learning Outside the Lines, a book that discusses mentoring and academic achievement for students with learning disabilities and ADHD. In 2004, Mooney lectured as part of the Steven Hirsch '71 and Susan Hirsch Fund for Students with Disabilities lecture series at Vassar. The talk inspired Vassar students David Singer '05 and Kathryn Singer '05 to initiate the program's first chapter, sponsored by the same umbrella organization.

Vassar's chapter of the program, now coordinated by Danny Gilberg '10 and Kamlani, works with students from grades six through eight at Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie. "What's amazing is that this is something started by college students and is growing because of the commitment of college students with learning differences to make a positive difference in the children's lives," explained Vassar's Associate Dean and Director of Equal Opportunity Belinda Guthrie.

To become Project Coordinators, Gilberg and Kamlani participated in a four-day national conference this summer. "At the orientation, a common feeling of people doing the program was that they wished that they had the opportunity to do something like this as a middle schooler," Gilberg noted. Flink also described the incredible community feeling that this conference encourages. He stated, "That experience of being around all these college students and other people with learning disabilities is life changing for me every time."

The seven members of the Vassar chapter visit Oakwood twice a week. On the first visit, the mentor and the student have academic time together—they talk, do homework and play games. Then, every Friday, they return for Art Room, in which they create crafts that correspond with the National Headquarters' curriculum.

This year's Art Room theme involves exploring the connections that people with learning disabilities share. Following this notion, for last week's craft participants constructed a large flag for the chapter. "We had everyone cut out magazine pictures that capture what Project Eye-to-Eye means to them and glue them on pieces of construction paper," Gilberg explained. "We then glued these smaller sheets on one large piece of paper, symbolizing that each student is a smaller piece in the chapter, which is even a smaller piece in the national organization."

"We were looking for a tool that would allow students to be more comfortable with communicating their feelings," Flink noted with reference to the program's artistic aspects. Education activist and writer Maxine Greene's work spurred the idea to employ artwork as a means to increase communication and self-esteem. "What she's describing in her work is that art is a form of democracy," Flink said. "It gives people a voice and allows people to express themselves in ways that they are often not able to. That's really the bedrock of our work, it allows kids to talk about things that they struggle with in school."

For another craft earlier this year, everyone plastered a part of their body that represented their talents. "I plastered my hand to symbolize that I'm a hands-on learner," Gilberg stated. "One girl did her ear because she's a good listener." To wrap up each Art Room session, everyone presents their work of art to the group. "The point of presenting is so that it gives them an opportunity for them to affirm their talents and weaknesses in a concrete way," Gilberg said.

Mentors work with the same middle schooler throughout the whole year, allowing them to create profound connections and become comfortable around each other. "What happens is that the kids often start out very hesitant toward the program," Gilberg elucidated. "They are at an age where the learning disabilities are a raw nerve. The program starts out as a reminder of their disabilities, but, in the end, the kids warm up to it."

Thinking back on his own experiences, Gilberg explained that he never had the opportunity to participate in such a program before college. "I was diagnosed with learning disabilities in sixth grade," he said. "I was old enough to understand that something was going on, but I didn't really know what. If I had been enrolled in a program like this, it would have helped put everything into perspective."

Through the mentoring process, these students have brought the community they've built at Oakwood back to the Vassar campus. "I think, first of all, it provides people who do this program with a community of people who understand learning disabilities at Vassar," Gilberg explained. The mentors give each other advice about accommodations, classes and professors. "When I was a freshman, the program director gave me advice about which classes best suit learning disabilities," Gilberg said. "It's great because that advice is very hard to find."

Speaking to the connection that this program creates among learning-disabled peers, Flink expressed, "I think it's what has kept me in this program for so many years. Having a learning disability is often a very isolating experience, and you feel like you are the only one who is struggling at school in that unique way and it's not something that you are encouraged to talk about."

"When I was suddenly surrounded by college students," he continued, "all of whom had learning disabilities and were empowered, you realize that the way you learn isn't broken; it's just different. It taught me a lot about how I learn and who I am."

Kamlani further realized that mentoring impacts her own academic endeavors. By helping these younger students feel confident about their abilities, the mentors in turn return to Vassar with more confidence. "Before I started working with Eye-to-Eye, I was stubborn and refused to use my academic accommodations," she explained. "It was only after starting this program that I realized, ‘Oh hey, it's totally fine to utilize the tools that I have if it's going to help me.'"

According to the 2009 National Longitudinal Transitional Study, only one in three students with learning disabilities enrolled in a post-secondary school within two years of graduating from high school. "What is it that makes a Vassar student, or any student that has made it to higher education in particularly selective institutions, to be able to overcome those odds?" Guthrie asked. "From what I have heard, at some point in their lives, they've had a mentor. They've had someone who believed in them and recognized their potential and nurtured their hope to have a successful life."

By becoming mentors, these students generate hope and support in these younger students' minds. "There is something extremely powerful to a child about having that mentor be someone who is a young adult," Guthrie noted, "because there's a child who is struggling in school and here they have a successful college student that they can look up to and say, ‘Well, they did it, so maybe I can.'"

Kamlani explained that the mentorship process allows her to discuss her learning differences: "Working with Eye-to-Eye really helped me open up to my friends about my learning disabilities too. I was nervous the first time I brought it up, afraid of being judged and what not. But it was like, okay, if seventh graders can do this, I really should be able to as well."

"I love going to Oakwood," Kamlani expressed. "The two hours I spend with the kids each week are two hours of getting to be someone's superhero. And how is that not the coolest feeling ever?"

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