The Truchas Chapter Board of Directors has signed the chapter on to the Monte del Sol Mentorship Program, and we are looking for members willing to spend a school year teaching one high school student to fly fish.
Monte del Sol Charter School in Santa Fe has run the program since 2000. A student picks a field to go deep on, and the school pairs him with somebody from around town who has spent a lifetime doing it. The program places up to 100 mentors a year and has completed more than 3,500 mentorships. Recent ones have covered welding, orthodontics, aviation, drone photography, hip hop dance and bioinformatics.
Fly angling would be new.
How much time does it take?
Two hours a week, outside school hours, across one school year. Students choose their field in August and September, matching happens in September and October, and the mentorship runs through April or May. Students and their families are responsible for transportation. Mentors are hosted at an appreciation evening in February, students present their work at the Mentorship Festival in late April, and each mentorship earns a credit toward the two required to graduate.
Eric Callow, who is carrying this for the board, calls it a serious but manageable commitment in terms of time and thoughtfulness. That is fair. It is a school year, not an afternoon.
Why the board said yes
A student who spends a year learning to read water gains some stake in whether that water stays cold and clean. That is the same reason the chapter partners with RiverSource, does projects in the Pecos Wilderness, and has sixteen classrooms through Trout in the Classroom.
How to volunteer
Talk to Eric. Email [email protected] or call (818) 219-2276. He will answer the questions he can, and introduce you to Giselle Piburn, the Mentorship Program Director at Monte del Sol.
Matching runs September into October, so now is when a conversation is useful rather than in November.
More about the program on the school’s own site: https://www.montedelsolcharterschool.org/mentorship/
Every one of us learned this from somebody. The Truchas Chapter of Trout Unlimited is looking for a few members ready to be that somebody for a Monte del Sol student this year.
