College Mentors for Kids

 “The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” 

-Steven Spielberg

Throughout my sophomore year (2020-2021) I was a mentor for the College Mentors for Kids program at NC State. Its mission is to transform lives through mentoring, and it connects elementary-aged kids to college students through weekly activities that inspire growth, confidence, and brighter futures. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, our weekly 1-hour meetings took place virtually, but they were just as fun as they would have been in-person. Each mentor in the program is paired with a little buddy in elementary school and placed in a buddy family with one or two other mentors and little buddies. We start off each activity day by greeting our little buddies and catching up with them, and then we spend 10 minutes doing something active. The rest of the time is spent covering a certain theme (such as animals, space, volunteering, careers, etc.). We introduce the theme with a read-aloud book and then play games and participate in interactive activities to further explore the theme. Before we log off we spend some time reflecting on the activities we did and chatting about whatever our little buddies would like to talk about.

My Buddy Family

My little buddy's name is Eliana; she just graduated from the 4th grade and is really excited to be a 5th grader. She is outgoing, very talkative, a great learner, an amazing violinist, and the best trivia player I know. She has no shortage of friends, but her best friend has to be her cat… she is absolutely in love. When she grows up, she wants to be a computer scientist for NASA and hopefully she will choose to attend NC State University to accomplish that goal :)

This was truly an awesome experience and I plan on continuing in the program until I graduate. Eliana truly inspires me with her dedication to following her dreams, her excitement for learning, and her fun and positive energy! I feel that this program has helped me learn how to be a mentor for elementary-aged students, and not just a teacher. I plan to draw on my experience from this program when I am a teacher to help me connect with my students, be a mentor for them, and structure lessons in a way that is engaging for them.

I will be using my participation in this program as an engagement experience under the Community Engagement theme for the Passport to Success program.