This article chronicles a 4th-grade teacher's experiences of facilitating a program involving university students as mentors for her students. Through a qualitative research design integrating features of case study and ethnographic research, this study examined how a mentoring program provided a differentiated educational experience for high-ability students. The mentorship approach described in this study is one strategy examined in the first author's larger study of the same teacher's differentiated classroom (Hébert, 1995). Major findings of the current study describe a thoughtfully designed program resulting in partnerships that provided the high-ability students with an intellectually stimulating experience combined with strong motivational and emotional support.
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