Last year we started a new ministry at Grace called Kids Hope USA. This ministry is growing in popularity in Arlington as many AISD schools are asking for churches to help partner with them to help their students. Kids Hope USA comes alongside churches to train mentors to spend one hour a week with one student for one academic year. The school we chose for 2021-2022 was Foster Elementary school because Principal Burden asked for a Kids Hope program at her school.
In September of 2021, the school’s counselor helped match up students with mentors and I was paired up with a student who lost his mom at a very young age and lived most of the week with his grandmother. He was struggling with behavior in class and his grades were suffering and his grandmother wanted him to be a part of the program. Almost every Monday for the year I went to Foster during the school day and met with my student and we talked a lot about life, character things, school things, and of course video games too. We spent time inside the school, especially the library, and outside the school on the playground, especially the basketball court. I wondered often during the year if I was making a difference and whether I should keep going. I wondered if the words I was speaking were sinking in, or if this all was a waste of time. Ms. Mitchell the school counselor encouraged me that elementary students, especially ones that have experienced trauma in their life, don’t always express what is going on inside of them and so I should continue to encourage my student regardless of what he communicated back to me. At the very end of the semester, I told him I had enjoyed hanging out with him and I hoped he would have a great summer and I was proud of the improvements he had made. His teacher had told us that my student’s behavior had improved a lot in his class and his grades were much improved. Then on the last day we met together he asked me if I was coming back and I told him I would of course come back if he and his caretakers wanted me to come again. He said he definitely did. Then I got this recently from the school counselor at Foster,”
Guess who is ready to see you? Your student! His grandmother said he talked about you all summer. And he just came to my office and said, "It's past Monday, and my mentor hasn't been here." I told him we were going to try to start toward the end of September, and he was like, "Oh." So just know you made an impact on that little boy, and he was hoping he would have you again as a mentor. I know some days you couldn't tell it, but you did.
We can’t always tell when we are making a difference or not. I definitely couldn’t tell if the time I spent with this student was making a difference but it sure seems to have impacted him. And other students were impacted as well. Bill McKean shared with me recently that his student struggled with fighting and throughout the semester Bill was able to encourage his student to use his words and intelligence instead of fighting with his peers. Bill also shared how important it was to have a prayer partner (Michael Howser) praying for him as a mentor. Debbie Todisco shared how her past hurts, such as losing a parent at a young age, helped prepare her to encourage and help her student go through similar things. Her student believed that her teacher hated her and with Debbie’s encouragement the teacher and the student became friends.
I am looking forward to being at Foster again every week this semester and many of the mentors from last year are returning this year as well. The school has asked us to double our number of mentors from 10 to 20 this year and we have a ways to go to make that a reality. After the ministry fair, we had quite a few signups and I’m hopeful that we will have double the impact this year than we had last year with the students at Foster Elementary school.
