Crossroads: The Influence of Mentors on Students in Schools

Crossroads Mentor, Dave Pearson (front) with mentees

For more than a decade, Change Inc. has collaborated with teachers, administrators, and other educators to embed mentors in public schools, better known as our Crossroads program. Crossroads mentors, known as Community Cultural Specialists, provide life skills mentoring and classroom observations and supports.

The goals of Crossroads include supporting individual students at risk of school failure due to academic or behavioral circumstances, and contributing to a positive school climate in each school community in which we work.

During the height of the COVID pandemic and for several years following, Crossroads programming expanded its response to community. At its peak, Crossroads was offered in 13 school communities across the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Public School districts. In 2024-2025, due to less grant funding combined with budget cuts in the schools, Crossroads provided services in just six schools in Saint Paul and two schools in Minneapolis. Positively, funding from the Northwest Family Resource Collaborative enabled an expansion into six schools in the Osseo and Brooklyn Center school districts.  

In total, Crossroads provided direct mentoring services to 123 students in grades 6-12+ last school year. We asked student mentees for words that describe how their mentor helped them. The word cloud image below is based on their responses.