The Oglethorpe Echo
Arnoldsville’s Leslie Jones remembers her grandmother teaching her how to draw flowers as a kid. A retired elementary school teacher and “grandmama” herself, Jones now mentors a first-grade girl as part of Students Taking a New Direction (STAND) program in the Oglethorpe County schools.
Jones said teaching her mentee to draw flowers was one of her favorite moments with the program.
“My grandmother had showed me how to draw different flowers, like roses and tulips and daisies,” she said. “So I was showing her how to draw those things, and she looked over at me and she said, ‘this is magical.’”
Last year, Jones met with her mentee every Friday to talk and provide guidance and encouragement.
“She’d like to walk around the school and just go on an adventure,” she said. “We would look for the ABCs, you know, she’d find something in the hall that had an A, and then she would tell me a story about something that happened in class. Just letting her talk.”
Former OCHS assistant principal and current transportation/mentor coordinator Veronica Hunter started STAND last year to replace a previous mentor program that went away during COVID-19.
Hunter said the program had 25 students and 20 mentors across Oglethorpe County schools its first year. She said school counselors provide her with a list of students for the program and most of last year’s mentors asked to keep the same mentee in the 2024-25 school year.
“After COVID, things just kind of went haywire,” she said. “Nobody was visiting anybody, and once we finally got back in school, we didn’t have a lot of time to do that. We were trying to catch kids back up.”
The program requires mentors to meet or talk with their mentee over the phone or text for at least two hours each week. While it may seem like a big time commitment, Jones said “it’s a very enriching investment of time for both” the mentor and the mentee.
Hunter said the two-hour rule is meant to provide flexibility for mentors who work during the day, but most mentors go beyond the two hours every week.
She said the only requirement for potential mentors is a background check. Aside from that, she said anyone who is breathing and willing to work makes a good candidate for STAND.
Jones said it’s important for the kids to just have someone to talk to. She said kids these days need a way to express themselves or talk about things that they might not want to talk to their parents or teachers about.
“Nowadays, it seems like our children have more emotional needs, and sometimes they can’t get that answered when the family is so busy and school can be stressful,” she said. “It’s just a time to unload.”
She said the simplest activities, like teaching her mentee to play Go Fish, work best because they allow her to fully listen to the child.
“She would talk nonstop while we were playing that game,” she said. “Just doing something that was very low key, not stressful.”
Winterville’s Steve Faley said he has interacted with and supported kids at New Springhill Baptist Church for years. He said he was happy when Hunter approached him to be a mentor with STAND last year.
“You get that feeling when you get to feel like you’re really doing good or making a difference in someone’s life,” he said. “It’s really good to have that feeling.”
Faley said the biggest skills to being a good mentor is patience and listening. Like Jones, he said that the kids need someone to just listen and to understand what they are going through. He also said that his background helps him to connect with his mentee.
“When I was coming up, when I was in school, I was bullied for a minute,” he said. “I went through a lot when I was a kid, so I understand what kids go through.”
But for Faley, the most important thing is just being present for the student.
“You’ve got to be a motivator that’s going to drive them and to listen and let them know that you’re going to be there, that somebody is going to really be there for them, not just saying it,” he said.