Mentors give at-risk Fort Worth children something they crave: undivided attention

Students in a fourth grade class lined up outside the auditorium at Daggett Elementary School, eagerly waiting to meet their mentors after several delays of in-person meetings since the pandemic.

When three fourth-graders were asked what they looked forward to most, they each responded “everything.”

A program called Academy 4 provides volunteers from nearby high schools, neighborhoods or churches who mentor fourth grade students around leadership skills such as listening attentively, being kind and having a positive attitude. But what Daggett fourth grade teacher Stacy Gordon said students most enjoy is having a positive adult relationship where all of the adult’s attention is on them. Attention like that for most students in Title I schools like hers is rare, she said.

“A lot of our students go home, and they are the ones in charge even in the fourth grade,” Gordon said. “They go help with the children, they take care of the babies, they help mom, they help dad. It’s exciting to them to have somebody focus all of their attention just on them for 45 minutes.”

Academy 4 is a nonprofit organization that connects mentors with Title I fourth grade students in their communities once a month to talk about leadership. The program is established in 10 Fort Worth school district campuses and 27 schools in total. The curriculum was formed in Daggett Elementary, south of the hospital district, 10 years ago.

The Title I classification is given to schools where 40% or more of students receive free or reduced lunch. But that indicator of poverty is higher at Academy 4 schools, where the average school has 87% of students on free or reduced lunch.

On every Academy 4 Friday, students can pick between a variety of clubs where volunteers teach activities such as golf, robotics and cooking. Then they meet with their mentors to discuss a leadership skill of the month ranging in topics from listening, respect or being an example to others. In February’s lesson, students drew maps of all the steps necessary to reach their future career goal.

The program started out of a need to encourage underserved students to strive to be better in their communities.

“We’re teaching them that they don’t have to settle,” John Shearer, Academy 4’s executive director, said.

But Shearer said the real success of the program is in the positive mentoring relationships that are built.

“We know about resource gaps of various kinds, but what we never talk about are relationship gaps,” Shearer said.

Adverse childhood experiences

Shearer said most of the students in the schools served by the program are likely to experience what are called adverse childhood experiences, or traumatic events, that studies suggest, when combined, are likely to increase the likelihood of negative health effects, unemployment, drug use, crime or suicide.

Some of these traumatic experiences relate to neglect or a lack of meaningful adult relationships, such as living in a single-parent household, having a parent who struggles with substance abuse or having an incarcerated family member.

When Shearer talks to principals before starting to work in a school, they often say that most or all of their students face four or more of these experiences. At Daggett, staff members were told all of their students were at risk.

Although almost 60% of people have experienced at least one traumatic experience, research shows there are disparities by race and ethnicity. A 2020 study of over 200,000 adults showed white individuals showed significantly lower incidences of adverse childhood experiences than Black and Hispanic individuals.

Academy 4 bases its strategy on research of the benefits of mentoring for children. Studies have shown mentoring improves students’ academic performance, increases their sense of responsibility and helps them grow social and emotional awareness, Shearer said.

“I always challenge people to stop and think for a moment, ‘Who’s helped you. How did you get here?’” Shearer said. “We don’t do anything in life without people surrounding us to encourage us and help us.”

Volunteers come from various careers and represent a variety of ages. Many mentors are found through local churches near elementary schools.

Ted and Dana Settle live across the street from Daggett and have been mentoring since they first heard about the program at their neighborhood networking session. They said they appreciate the time they can spend with kids at such an impressionable age.

“They want to be a good person, a good citizen. They’re just yearning for that,” Dana Settle said.

Mentoring was chosen for fourth grade for a reason, Shearer said. From the ages of 8 to 10, students become more independent from their parents, begin to develop planning and organizational skills, develop a sense of responsibility, move away from concrete thinking styles and begin to understand abstract concepts such as leadership, Shearer said.

“This is where, for better or worse, we become who we’re going to be,” Shearer said.

Gordon, the fourth grade teacher, said in that age range students begin to develop individual characteristics and a sense of self.

They are “starting to come into the idea of themselves in a world greater than they are,” Gordon said.

As a teacher at Daggett for 18 years, Gordon has seen Academy 4 work since its inception, and she was one of several teachers who helped write the program’s curriculum.

Her students are typically thrilled every time it’s Academy 4 Friday, which she said can be a challenging set of emotions to manage.

“It’s just a challenge that we’re going to continue because it’s proven so valuable to our kiddos,” Gordon said. “I absolutely love it from a teacher standpoint because the kids are so happy and so excited, and we don’t get to see that often.”

Gordon has seen several of her students grow into high school students who come back to mentor fourth-graders.

‘Better for himself’

Jose Nava, 17, went through the program as a fourth-grader and now, as a Paschal high school senior, is mentoring a fourth-grader. When they weren’t able to meet in person because of a spike in COVID cases, they wrote each other notes. The student Nava mentors wished him luck on his upcoming school assignments.

Nava still remembers the time he spent as a fourth-grader with his mentor. He said he enjoyed each Academy 4 session and the chance to talk about his dreams for the future. He hopes the student he works with takes the same from the experience.

“I am hoping to see him become better for himself,” Nava said. “It helps me learn to teach people better.”

The student Nava works with wants to win a Nobel prize, and Nava is hoping to attend trade school to become an electrician or a plumber after he graduates from Paschal in May.

For more information on Academy 4, visit academy4.org.