Each semester, AmeriCorps’ Project MARS collects “Great Stories” from its members in which they reflect on their experiences mentoring in the classroom and the progress they see students making. This month’s story comes from Samantha Cross about a pre-COVID 19 experience.
To start with, I feel that us as mentors seem to come along at just the right moment, at a time when these students need us the most. I also feel that these kiddos see potential in us as mentors that others, including ourselves, can’t or won’t.
I have been working with this student that is in kindergarten. This little boy has such a hard time in a classroom setting, he cannot function to stay on task, he can’t stand to really have authority from anyone. Well, as I started watching this little boy right before Christmas. I talked with my site supervisor about going in and working with him on some of my down time.
So every time I would go in and visit him his world would just light up. As long as I was with him, he would do great. He never had no issues but, it seemed that he would always get upset when I left the room. So I started trying to not go as much.
But I feel that the connection I had with this little boy was such a happy meeting. He recently had to go on homebound, but as he was leaving the school that day, he hugged me and told me that he would be back to school after he got all of his anger issues fixed.
This just broke my heart to know that a 5-year-old knows that they have anger issues but they just don’t know how to control them. My hope is that he will come back to school soon and he will be able to function just like other kids his age.
