Blog: The Power of Peer Mentoring Through Father Ryan’s House System

High school is an exciting yet often overwhelming time with new classes, new friends, and big questions about the future. Peer mentoring makes the critical difference for all high school students with powerful, student-to-student opportunities to grow, connect, and succeed.

In fall 2020, Father Ryan High School launched its nationally recognized House System, a student-development program that intentionally helps students build confidence and improve academic performance and leadership skills with peer mentoring at the center. We talked with Francisco M. Espinosa, Jr., Father Ryan Principal, and Amy Duke, Director of Houses, about how the House System transforms a large school into a smaller community—and positively impacts the high school experience for all students.

Q: Why is peer mentoring through the Father Ryan House System so critical to student development, especially for high school students?

Amy Duke: A House System allows students to form consistent relationships with peers and adults. We divide our 800+ students into six Houses, with each House having seven smaller Mentor Groups with 20-25 students of all grades and 2-3 faculty and staff mentors per Mentor Group. We place new students into Houses during our New Family Welcome event before their first day of school. Our students know they are part of a smaller community the moment they arrive and start making friends with their House members immediately.

Students remain with their House and Mentor Group all four years. Each Mentor Group meets every academic day for 20 minutes. This gives each student a smaller place to belong, to build relationships across different grades, and to create relationships that they may not otherwise form. Most students are in Mentor Groups with students and adults they would not see on a day-to-day basis. Mentor Groups are a home base, a stable place that they go to every single day. And sometimes in high school, with everything changing, this is the place where they feel the most comfortable and the most at home.

Frank Espinosa: From a pedagogy standpoint, the best learning occurs in relationships. When we think about the liturgy in the Catholic Church, it is done in communion with others. The House System allows students to build relationships. The Father Ryan promise is “You Will Be Known. You Will Be Loved.” That’s what the church calls us to do, to form the whole child within the community.

Mentor Groups offer adults more opportunities to connect with students. In most cases in high school, a student sees five to seven teachers a day. Through the House System, there are up to three additional adults across all our departments who truly know and love them. Our faculty and staff now have greater involvement in the school. The House System helps them to be known and loved, too.

Q: What happens with peer mentoring in the House System?

Amy Duke: With freshmen through seniors all together in Mentor Groups, seniors can share their wisdom about academic scheduling and other topics with underclassmen. Younger students can get answers to the questions that they are sometimes uncomfortable asking teachers.

In many high schools, first-year students would rarely interact with juniors and seniors, but in Mentor Groups, they do every day. One of Mr. Davis's [Father Ryan President] favorite stories is about a recent soccer playoff match on campus. Our girls team was tied in overtime. A freshman kicked the last free kick and missed. Two senior players immediately ran onto the field and hugged her. Mr. Davis mentioned this to the seniors the next day, and the seniors told him that she was in their Mentor Group, so they wanted to check on her.

Frank Espinosa: Those peer relationships are 100 times more impactful than adult relationships. That is where the House System allows students to give and to get. Freshmen at every school often feel like deer in headlights. At Father Ryan, I have seen older kids sit down with freshmen at the lunch table or even help them find their classroom. It is so impactful when a young 14-year-old, feeling somewhat unsure about things, is reassured by upperclassmen in their Mentor Group. It spawns a relationship for a lifetime. Our Mentor Groups are not clubs. They are a way of life at Father Ryan. It is in our lifeblood to develop and nurture students from all walks and faiths of life.

Q: What is unique about the Father Ryan House System?

Amy Duke: We are a blueprint for other schools, many of whom come to Father Ryan to see how we integrate our House System into our day-to-day life. This past summer, we hosted the House System Institute National Symposium for 42 high schools and 125 educators across the country. During this time, we discovered many school’s House Systems do not meet with their Mentor Groups daily. This gives our Mentor Groups a strength that other schools don't have. Being together in their smaller community is ingrained in students’ everyday experience. It is 20 minutes every day, which gives students the strength and time to build relationships. It also allows adults who would not spend time with one another outside of their discipline or department the opportunity to get to know each other.

Conference attendees were impressed with what our faculty Heads of Houses accomplish. They are involved in the planning of Mentor Groups, chaperone all activities, develop student leaders, assist students in planning events, receive feedback from students and adults, and check in with students for once-a-quarter individual grade checks. We are open to change and see it as an evolution.

Q: Post-COVID, why is intentional community and peer mentoring so critical for teenagers’ development?

Amy Duke: For many teenagers post-COVID, life is very digital and constantly changing. The House System and Mentor Groups provide a place of stability and a sense of identity. When we started the House System in 2020, after two years of intentional planning, we were in the full throes of COVID, with masked students sitting six feet apart. It looked very different than how it looks today, but those first Mentor Groups were still the place where students felt the most comfortable and could thrive and have fun.

Students need close peer relationships now more than ever, specifically close relationships with adults in their schools. Our graduates seek out their faculty and staff mentors when they return to Father Ryan.

Frank Espinosa: With current technologies, it is easy to be isolated, but our House System allows our community to be together in a way that transforms the culture and the relationships. [NOTE: Father Ryan does not allow students to use their personal cell phone devices during the school day.] When they leave high school, students may forget what chapter they read in English class, but they are not going to forget the memories they made in Mentor Group. When I arrived at Father Ryan in 2023, I had no experience with a House System. What I see now is such a great synergy between the adults and the students. It is transformational.

Q: How does Father Ryan’s House System develop leadership?

Amy Duke: We have 210 House leadership positions, including eight elected freshman positions per House. Unlike a traditional student council, which usually has few leadership positions, about a quarter of our students serve each year in House leadership roles.

In traditional student councils, it is always the usual suspects chosen to be student council leaders. Often, our best leaders of the House System are not the usual students who would be chosen as leaders. Mentor Groups allow us to nurture leadership and catch kids who might fall through the cracks.

I have watched students who get involved as freshmen grow in their leadership skills over four years. We had an elected Freshman Delegate who led his House’s Canned Food Drive efforts [the responsibility of each Freshman Delegate]. He was a quiet student, but was such a big leader during that project that we encouraged him to run for a larger position as a sophomore. He continued to build on his leadership skills, and by senior year, he hosted two of the three schoolwide pep rallies and became one of those affable leaders that the kids just naturally want to follow.

To see freshmen break out of their shells in Mentor Groups and to watch seniors take freshmen under their wings is amazing. Keeping the same group of students together for four years develops lasting relationships as students grow organically as leaders in formal and informal ways. 

Q: What role does the House System play in school spirit and tradition, and why is that important in a community?

Frank Espinosa: The names of our Houses come from part of Father Ryan’s 100-year-old legacy, which helps to connect students more deeply to our traditions and history. We have an annual House Cup. Each House competes in friendly competitions all year long to earn points. We have discovered that kids in the larger Nashville community, before they are Father Ryan students, are excited about our House System. I spoke to a fourth grader at Christ the King School who told me his classmates were already talking about which House they were going to join. Some already know because their older siblings are at Father Ryan, and we place siblings in the same House.

Amy Duke: Father Ryan is a place of traditions. While we strongly value the traditions from the past 100 years, the House System allows students to create their own traditions and build their own legacy. For example, the House System is in charge of Homecoming Court. A couple of years ago, the seniors started wearing shoes the color of their House. They did it all on their own and never told a single adult. Before they walked onto the football field, they showed me their shoes. One of our House colors is chartreuse, and to find shoes in that color is quite a feat. Students also brought back the three-on-three basketball tournament as a House competition, after a 15-year hiatus. The House System gives our students a broader voice for our traditions and creates new parts of our identity.

Q: How does the House System help with spiritual formation?

Frank Espinosa: Our goal is to implement faith and service in a way that each House is coming together to work for the greater good of their development, but also for their faith formation. We have service days that allow students to complete community outreach together. Each House has a designated Saint as well, so students learn more about role models in the Catholic faith. The House Saint for Norwood House is Pier Giorgio Frassati. In September 2025, a group of students went to his canonization in Rome.

Each Mentor Group has a student Chaplain who leads their Mentor Group in prayer every day. Houses celebrate their Saint’s Feast Day, and Mentor Groups will choose to schedule time to go to the Chapel for meditation and prayer time. The House System is fun and games, but it is also a very intentional time to focus on faith development.

Q: What is new this year for Father Ryan’s House System?

Amy Duke: We are working with our Personal Counseling Department this year to provide specific Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) peer training within Mentor Groups. Mentor Group Leaders [sophomores through seniors] are developing and leading their peers on SEL topics like time management and how to cope with stress in a healthy way. Part of our goal with Mentor Groups, which is a healthy break in the middle of the academic day, is to give students coping skills to take with them when they graduate.

Frank Espinosa: When you meet like this every day, the biggest hurdle is creating meaningful programming that is developmentally appropriate. We know what our students need, and while our House System sets the standard across the nation, we are always looking to enhance our program and what it offers. 

 

Learn More About the Impact of the House System