Richmond students mentor at inner-city elementary school

Carver Promise Mentoring started its 19th year of service at Carver Elementary School last week, and approximately 15 University of Richmond volunteers were paired up with mentees for the 2008-09 school year.

The school is not in a very good neighborhood, said Monica Maloney, a sophomore and one of two on-campus coordinators for the program at Richmond. The doors are locked at all times, and everyone must be buzzed into the building.

Once inside, each person must sign in and be given a yellow visitor sticker, said Brenda Drew, the executive director of Carver Promise. Many of the students are from housing projects, face economic hardships and are not always well-prepared for an academic environment, Drew said.

This is Drew's second year with Carver Promise. She was a former high school principal and said she had been familiar with the organization prior to her arrival because the high school did service-learning projects affiliated with Carver Promise.

"I'm just so impressed by the commitment of the university students," she said.

College students from the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and Virginia Union University volunteer as mentors for Carver Promise. This year the program expects to have about 230 mentors working with kindergarten through third-grade students, Drew said. The program expanded this year to include third-graders, and by 2010, it expects to provide mentors for children through fifth grade, she said.

Carver Promise is a non-profit organization that works with elementary school children in Richmond public schools to encourage youth to pursue higher education through its mentoring program.

Carver Elementary School is one of 29 elementary schools and 43 total public schools in downtown Richmond, and there are approximately 500 children enrolled in its kindergarten through fifth-grade classes, Drew said.

A mother came up to Drew last week when the program started and said she had been a Carver Promise student when she was in elementary school. The young woman was 19 years old, and her daughter was entering her first year in the program, Drew said.

About 15 Richmond students volunteer as mentors, a smaller group than the groups of volunteers from other universities, Maloney said. Drew attributed this to the longer commute Richmond students have to make to get to Carver Elementary School.

Maloney found out about Carver Promise through a SpiderByte as a freshman and began her second year volunteering for the program last week.

Last year, she mentored a boy who she said was wild, hard to get to know and would run away from her in the halls. He transferred during the middle of last year, so she has been assigned a new mentee this year.

Maloney's new mentee is a third-grade boy who she said had already opened up to her about his family situation, including that his father was in jail and his baby sister had died. He also has trouble writing some letters of the alphabet, so she has started working with him on that, she said.

The other on-campus coordinator, senior Brenna Sackman, has been mentoring since her sophomore year with both first- and second-grade students. Being around college students leaves a good impression on the younger students, and they are tangible role models for each mentee, Sackman said.

"The kids are really into it, and some of them really bond with their mentors," Sackman said.

The children are always smiling and get excited when the mentors are around and ask about them when the mentors are not there, Drew said.

As of last week there were 125 mentors matched with second-graders and third-graders, but Carver Promise officials said they wanted to have a total of 230 mentors by Oct. 2. The rest of the mentors will be matched up with first-grade and kindergarten students, Drew said.

Mentors are paired with one mentee for the entire school year, and returning mentors sometimes work with the same mentee for several years. Before working with the children, each mentor is required to attend a training session to learn the guidelines to being a mentor. Mentors are not allowed to take the children out of the building, give presents, give money or bend rules, and must be careful about what they say to the mentees, Maloney said.

Each mentor is required to come into the school and spend time with his or her mentee for at least one hour per week. They help the students with schoolwork, communication skills, participate in various activities and occasionally eat lunch with them, Drew said.

Last week, one of the activities that Carver Promise sponsored was "time capsule," Drew said. Each student wrote five things they wanted to accomplish this year and then placed the note in a baggie to be put in a box -- the "time capsule" -- until the end of school in May. This activity was done so that mentees and mentors could reflect at the end of the year on what they had accomplished together and what skills the mentee had improved, she said.

"They just want someone who seems to care about them," Drew said.

Contact staff writer Jessie Murray at jessica.murray@richmond.edu