More Than Just a Title
By Eleanor Bauermeister
Every year, many students apply to be in the National Honor Society, or more commonly known as NHS. Students get selected in by a panel of teachers, who nominate the students who get in. Then each student newly selected to NHS goes to an induction ceremony. At many schools, NHS is just a club to be in for the title, but at Pierce High, NHS members do more.
Each year, parents of seventh and eighth grade students can choose to sign their child up to be an NHS mentee. While the student will not necessarily get a mentor, numerous students do get one. Each week, the junior high mentee will meet up with their mentor and do some sort of activity. Some choose to walk and talk, play games, make a candy salad, or some go to the gym to play volleyball or basketball. However, there are many more activities that the mentors and mentees can do.
“My favorite part of being a mentor was the relationships after the mentorship was done. Being able to see firsthand how your mentee started to flourish in high school or even being able to be in the same clubs and activities with them was a really special experience,” Aubrey Hansen, 2025 graduate and a former NHS mentor, said.
Sophomore Quincy Bailey, a former mentee, said that he thought that having a mentor helped him to adjust and that it was nice being able to talk to an upperclassman. He also thought that the mentoring program was a very good thing for all students.
Four years ago, Melissa Legate became NHS sponsor. In NHS, there are four different pillars that students need to hold themselves to. The pillar of scholarship is a promise that students will keep good grades; the pillar of service is any sort of volunteering; the pillar of leadership is the promise for students to be leaders to their peers, and the pillar of character is the promise that students will stay out of trouble and continue to be good people.
When Legate first became sponsor, she said that she and guidance counselor Danielle Goestech looked at the pillars of NHS and the areas of the school that needed improvement. They decided that there was a bit of a lack in the pillar of service, since all of the members of NHS are already involved in many extracurriculars. So they decided to start the mentoring program to help out the junior high kids so they can adjust better.
So while the NHS mentoring program has only been around for a few years, it has already left a great impact on both the mentors and mentees alike.
