Inspire Santa Fe

Unlocking Inspiration Through Mentorship

Inspire Santa Fe is a citywide mentoring program pairing young people, ages 12-19, with adult mentors. The program asks youth from Santa Fe, “What do you want to learn?” and then matches the students with volunteer community experts.

Each adult mentor and youth protégé pair embarks on a nine-month exploration of their shared interest, meeting two hours a week throughout the school year. Together, they create a project related to their particular discipline that is presented at an end-of-year Festival of Learning. Past projects range from music and dance performances to culinary and alternative energy inventions to presentations on elder care and complexity theory. During the mentorship, mentor and protégé reflect on what they are learning about the field, and about themselves.

Inspire Santa Fe mentorships differ from other mentorships in that the mentor and protégé are brought together in joint exploration of a field they both care deeply about. This type of mentorship helps a young person fall in love with learning and offers mentors an opportunity to rediscover their own interests as they share their experience and wisdom with the next generation. Inspire mentorships can complement other worthy adult-student relationships like conventional teaching, coaching, academic tutoring, life mentoring, and college or career readiness support.

A unique collaboration between the Academy for the Love of Learning and the 60-year-old Siete del Norte Community Development Corporation, Inspire Santa Fe launched its pilot year in 2014-2015. The program grows out of the work and visions of Aaron Stern, president and founder of the Academy for the Love of Learning, and Paquita Hernandez, who created the CelebrateYouth! statewide mentorship program and directed the mentorship program at Monte del Sol Charter School. Major funding and support for Inspire Santa Fe is provided by the City of Santa Fe and Mayor Javier Gonzales.

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People

Jessica Smyser

Jessica Smyser works closely with staff and faculty to envision, plan, and implement the Academy’s marketing, development and communications strategies across all program areas. Jessica’s ...

Aaron Stern

Aaron Stern, president and founder of the Academy for the Love of Learning, is a musician, teacher, and internationally recognized consultant on learning.

As the Academy’s ...

Kira Jones

Kira Jones is a writer, an educator, an education reformer, an activist, and a mother. She holds Master’s degrees in Education and Journalism, and is ...

Quotes

""In an area of personal preference…there must be almost unlimited opportunity for the individual to grow to the level of excellence required to hold an audience, as in artistic performance, or to be capable, ultimately, of instructing others in something that requires a substantial commitment of time and energy to study and practice. The person becomes, in effect, an expert in something not learned easily.

The accompanying feeling of accomplishment is rewarding in itself and perhaps is transferable to motivation in other areas of endeavor - and certainly to appreciation of excellence in other fields. For humans not to experience this kind of satisfaction is a great loss.""

-John Goodly, A Place Called School

Academy Programs

Institute for Teaching