St. John Fisher College Mentors partner with Nativity Preparatory Academy of Rochester Students

St. John Fisher College Mentors partner with Nativity Preparatory Academy of Rochester Students

This fall, Nativity students partnered with St. John Fisher College student mentors on a writing project during after-school enrichments. The result was a beautiful collection of stories from Nativity students!

Monday through Thursday during the school year, from 2:30 – 4:00pm, Nativity students attend an extra-curricular activity of their choice such as basketball, writing club, step dance, music, art, and more. Many of these enrichment activities are possible because of volunteer partners and organizations who donate their time to work with Nativity’s middle school students in grades 5-8. Also, as Nativity is a donor-funded, tuition-free school, it is the financial support of generous donors that pay for the needed supplies, operational building costs, and salaries of the program directors that make it possible.

“It was so powerful to see the students pour their hearts into this creative work and to have the space, with guidance from our St. John Fisher College mentors, to accomplish this storytelling project,” said James C. Smith, President of Nativity Preparatory Academy of Rochester.

The writing collaboration between the two organizations was started due to an interest by the students at Nativity to write for fun and also by the addition of a new core curriculum class of community engaged learning at St. John Fisher College. Four St. John Fisher College students, Abby Latini ’24, Phoukham George Vongkhily ’24, Katie Cecconi ’24, and Ashanti Nelson 24′, participated in the project with 9 Nativity students.

Story highlights from the collaboration can be viewed here.