January 2016 is National Mentoring Month, and no group embraces those ideals more definitively than Cy Ranch’s Pony Up mentoring program. Pony Up allows senior mentors to meet with freshmen once a month to help them get an understanding of the high school life and academics that come with being that much closer to college.

Pony Up mentors cover a large difference in topics throughout the year, starting in the first semester when school starts. Pony Up is meant to aid the freshmen and help them adjust to high school by telling them what they need to do to accomplish academic goals.

“We try our best to help them and answer questions,” senior mentor Ramiro Diaz said. “Most of the time it’s just becoming friends with everyone in your group. That makes them comfortable.”

Diaz suspects that freshmen would be very unorganized if Pony Up wasn’t offered and the school allowed incoming students into adjust by themselves without helping them along the way.

“It would be really scary at first, especially in a school this big,” Diaz said.

Freshmen say that Pony Up is a good program for them when they are new to the school and still trying to adjust from middle school. Since middle school and high school are vastly different, it’s not a bad thing to help them out as much as possible, even if that means using a different bell schedule to get the information through to the freshmen.

“If we didn’t use the B schedule, there definitely wouldn’t be enough time for Pony Up in the mornings,” Diaz said.

Although time isn’t really an issue for the mentors, most of the program goes into just making sure they have an understanding of the material they are going over for that week. The student mentors focus on a mixture of many different things, but primarily academics. Things such as GPA,  class averages, and how best to prepare for college are a large part of the mentoring.

“It’s a lot that goes into it, but I think it helps a ton,” senior mentor Rachel Occelston said.

Given the material beforehand, the mentors are asked to cover the subject with their group of up to three or four freshmen and then discuss it as a group. Many mentors believe it’s an effective way to get them to learn the material.

“The group actually allows you to make new friends and learn new things, so its a win-win,” Occelston said.

Helping and teaching is the main goal of Pony Up, and being a mentor is just the back bone of what it means to help people in need.

“Being a mentor isn’t easy,” Occelston said. “But that’s why they only take sign ups and accept those willing to work.”