Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Connecting with the community
You can’t share what you don’t have
At the end of school last spring, I got a hand-scribbled card from the
fourth-grade guy I had been a mentor for at Ben Franklin Elementary all
school year.
“Thanks, Mr. Wilson,” it said. “You’re the greatest!”
Truth is: I wasn’t the greatest.
As his mentor, about all I did was show up at lunch once a week and
spend an hour with him, either reading in the library or watching him burn
off some excess energy on the soccer field.
I probably deserved more accolades for enduring a year’s worth of school
cafeteria food than for my mentoring.
But I was looking at things from my perspective.
I have no idea how he was looking at the relationship, and it’s possible
that his mother or a teacher told him he had to sit down and write me a
thank-you note. It’s also possible that I was the only adult in his life
who he knew would be there when expected and who wouldn’t constantly be
on his case because he was being a fourth-grade kid.
Maybe, from his perspective, I had made a difference.
I hope so.
I know that being there every Thursday last year (and now every Thursday
this year) is making a difference in me.
For one thing, it’s been — well — 13 or 14 years since I’ve been around
fourth-grade boys, and it’s fascinating to see both how much kids have
changed over that course of time and how much they haven’t changed.
For another, I am aware of what’s going on in the school itself, the
dynamics of teachers and students and what’s being taught. Schools are
different places today than they were when I was in fourth grade. That’s
interesting to know, and it’s interesting to observe.
And for another, I’m told that mentors really can and do make a difference
in the lives of the students they keep in touch with. That amazes me, because
it seems as if — if that’s true — I’m getting so much more than I’m giving.
I relate my experience as a mentor not to hoorah myself as “the greatest.”
I relate it here because I think that my experience in the program shows
me as a journalist the truth in the notion that you’ve got to be part of
a community to know a community and you’ve got to know a community to really
be able to tell people in the community about themselves. And, as journalists
that’s what we do.
Wilson is editor of the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
This article originally appeared in Scripps Howard News.
