Fort Worth — Fourth-graders at Lone Star Elementary School are learning that leadership has its rewards and challenges.
Twenty-four students, 12 in the fall and 12 in the spring, were chosen to become Junior Mentors in a new program at the school.Counselor Idalina Stine created the Junior “Ments” to expand opportunities for fourth-graders to help out around the school.Interested students wrote essays about why they wanted to be leaders, and teachers nominated two students from each class.Most students said they joined the group for the opportunity to help others.“I thought it would be fun to meet new people and make sure the school was cooperating and following all the rules,” said fourth-grader Reagan Hammond.In previous years, the campus had Lone Star Leaders, a group for older students to help with community service projects, but Junior Mentors get to assist in many areas. Students rotate between a number of activities: teachers in training, library aides, office aides, morning greeters and equipment managers.For teachers in training, fourth graders help kindergartners in the cafeteria by opening milk cartons, ketchup packets and other items or assist in classrooms with one-on-one lessons.Library aides reshelve books and read with younger students. Office aides assist staff and run errands around the school while morning greeters help with crowd control.Junior mentor Andy Trinh thinks that equipment manager is the toughest duty in the rotation because so many items are left on the playground and need to be collected.Other students say that working with kindergartners is the biggest challenge.Britney Nguyen said, “They’re noisy and sometimes they say ‘hi’ to you because they want to be friends, and sometimes they’re just crazy.”Sujit Vankineni said he has a new appreciation for teachers because little kids can be really hard to control.Stine said she began the program because she wanted to help students learn to become leaders.She talked with other school counselors in the district to get ideas of the tasks Junior Mentors could do.The mentors say that the perks of the job outweigh the difficulties.Britney said, “While you’re doing your job, you get to meet people and make new friends and hang out with the junior ments.”Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
