'Can you help me?': Exploring the influence of a mentoring program on high school males' of color academic engagement and self-perception in school

The K-12 schooling experiences of African American and Latino males are often characterized as a pipeline to prison. African American and Latino students are suspended and expelled from school at higher rates than any other racial group. The failures that African American and Latino males face in K-12 schools limit their opportunities as adults to become active participants in the workforce; instead many become participants in crime, unemployment and the criminal justice system. Mentoring programs and/or youth development programs have been implemented in schools and communities to help at-risk African American and Latino males.;The dissertation was guided by this major question: How do high school males of color describe and make sense of their academic engagement in school and self-perception while participating in an ecologically structured school-based mentoring program? For the ten high school males of color in this study I do an in-depth analysis using program observations, interviews, and data from journal writings to examine the meaning of their experiences in the program.;The ecological systems theory will help to explain how specific activities and functions that occurred within the various levels of the IMPACT's program ecological structure influenced the high school students' experiences in the program. Furthermore, I will use the different levels of the program's ecological system to describe how the activities and functions at those levels may or may not have an influence on the high school students' other settings that are located at each individual's micro system level. Also, I use the ecological systems theory to conceptualize the high school students' experiences at various levels of the program's ecology, how those experiences interacted with other levels of the IMPACT program's ecological structure and whether or not it influenced the high school students academically and personally.