In mid April we held an appreciation breakfast for the many volunteers across the district who help mentor, coach, and read to our students. Nearly 200 students are served by these mentoring programs. Some of these mentors are involved with the Check & Connect mentoring program where disengaged students are paired with a staff or community member for mentoring. They are also our Reading Heroes who sit and work with younger students on reading as well as our Kids Hope Mentors at Senita Valley in partnership with the Living Branch Church.
Another group of volunteers that was added this year was our Reading Buddies group. These mentors are Early Childhood Education CTE students at Mica Mountain and Cienega who pair up with students at Civano and Sycamore. We had 26 high school students participate. One shared that her highlight was helping her mentee find the courage to raise his hand. Another shared that she was able to help her student learn to take deep breaths when she got really anxious about something and watched as she used the tool later on her own.
Students coaching students is just a wonderful thing to watch. But, one of the greatest full circle moments this year was watching our Cienega and Mica Mountain students eat at the same appreciation breakfast with our older adult mentors of other programs who mentored these same students when they were elementary aged. We never really know the impact we might have on a child’s life. But, for these longtime and seasoned Vail volunteers, they got to watch as their former mentees who are now in high school have paid it forward as mentors ten years later. Priceless.
