This year, IB seniors at CHS created the International Baccalaureate (IB) Mentoring Program to help juniors that have recently joined IB. IB senior Riley Evans, the founder of the program, saw how much seniors knew about IB while others had a hard time with the program.

“As a junior, I struggled with the IB Program from the lack of motivation. The seniors had a lot of experience and knowledge with the IB Program, while the juniors were confused,” Evans said. “I thought that maybe this year the seniors could make things less challenging for juniors.”

Seniors have more experience and know that the road is difficult, so they can use that knowledge and apply it to helping their fellow classmates. Since seniors have about a year’s worth of information and experience with IB, Evans believes that seniors should use their experience to help aid and motivate the junior IB students, instead of letting it go to waste. This is something she realized after not getting much help from other students her junior year.

Evans’ plan is to have seniors from IB come and help out the juniors who have questions and problems in IB and to have a ‘big buddy’ system, where a couple of juniors are paired up with a senior, who acts as a ‘big buddy.’ Juniors can ask questions and their buddy can help solve their problems. Even though there were not many members from IB who attended the first meeting, there are hopes that as the year continues, the program will develop, grow more, and truly help the juniors as it was created to do. CHS junior and IB student Andrew Delvasto was looking for additional help and guidance from more experienced members.

“My IB ‘big buddy’ is Chloe Amarilla and she has helped me out with any questions I have had. I hope I can do the same thing next year for the class of 2017’s juniors,” Delvasto said.

Theory of Knowledge teacher Richard O’Neill understands how the IB program can cause perplexion as he often sees the effects of stress and lack of sleep in his class. He just wants to have a way to ease students’ frustration, the solution being to have students reach out to one another.

“The IB Program is a simple network where both sides can meet and exchange, and people are teamed up, just to share ideas, to explain those tactical everyday details, as IB is academically demanding,” O’Neill said.

The IB Mentoring Program will hopefully flourish as more juniors come to join the program. For the juniors that have been introduced to the IB Program, more difficulties will come their way, as they are challenged both mentally and academically. With meetings held regularly, a large amount of effort put into this program, and generous help offered by the IB student seniors at Claremont High, great things are sure to come.