Every day throughout LISD StuCo members sit down with elementary and middle school students and interact in a school environment. The mentoring program gives the younger children role models.

“They look up to those kids and they have to see successful people to inspire them to do better for themselves,” StuCo adviser Allison Stamey said.

While the mentors are there helping the mentee, the mentors also end up benefiting from the children they mentor.

“They’re helping the world become a better place; preparing the youth for what is to come in high school,” Stamey said. “It makes them feel good about what they are doing.”

A few years ago Stamey had a student mentor who decided to take fourth period off, but then returned back to class because he thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing.

“He made me feel good about what I was doing…he made me feel like I was helping him which in term made me feel wonderful,” Stamey said. “It’s a two way street.”

Those interested in enrolling in the student leadership class need to fill out a class application and have a couple of teacher recommendations. Social media will also be checked.

“The ones we don’t accept are the ones when you look and find they’re students that are not becoming leaders in social media,” Stamey said.

When Stamey first took over the program in 1995, they mentored once a week. Not only does mentoring occur every day, but it starts at Lilly Jackson Early Childhood Center and ends in the middle schools. Over the years they have added more students to the class to where they now have around a hundred students in each class.

Students can choose the days they want to mentor, and sometimes Spanish or Chin speakers are in high demand.

“We usually have to beg [the bilingual speakers] to mentor more than three days a week because they are such a big need for that leadership that we need outside of the schools,” Stamey said.

About 85 percent of the classes go out to mentor daily, and the students who stay work on school projects. The mentoring program gives kids a chance to trust people and open up to someone.

“This little girl told me that her teeth fall down yesterday and she said she got five dollars from the tooth fairy,” senior mentor Edith Granados said. “She was really happy, and I thought that was funny.”

When students see high school students come back to visit their respected elementary schools, they see how well they are doing in high school and it encourages them to try their best in school.

“The goal of the mentoring program is to give students role models to look up to, and to give them someone they would like to talk to,” DeLay Middle School Communities in Schools coordinator Jennifer Hughes said.

Students are able to get mentors by asking for one themselves, and teachers can also request for specific students to have one if they are struggling in class or needing a friend. Counselors and principals can also refer students.

“A lot of students will come and ask themselves because they see that their friends have a mentor and they think it’s really cool and fun,” Hughes said.

Senior StuCo member Kayla Conner was mentored when she was in elementary school, and now she is a mentor herself.

“I had a class mentor when I was younger and it’s definitely very inspiring,” Conner said. “It definitely helps shape our futures [because] whenever we see a strong leader, we want to grow up like them.”