Every Tuesday, Brook Avenue Elementary School student Keivyon “Ivy” Hall spends an hour with V. Beth Durham — “Ms. V” — reading, and playing cards and games.

During the school year, the first-grader and the 67-year-old retiree have formed a friendship and fondness for each other.

It’s a friendship you see sprouting up between students and community members all over Brook Avenue.

Deisy Ramirez pauses as she works with mentor Carole Knowlton.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

Durham is one of 60 Columbus Avenue Baptist Church members who are mentors to a student at Brook Avenue and spend time with them every week.

Other church members have pitched in to do everything from making breakfast for the school’s faculty and staff to raising money for a new playground.

The school and church began their relationship more than a year ago, and both sides said they couldn’t be more fulfilled.

“It’s been beyond anything I could ever have expected or imagined,” said Anne Broaddus, director of Kids Hope USA at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church.

She trains mentors at the church and works closely with Brook Avenue, helping to meet the school’s needs any way the church can.

Broaddus is thrilled with how the relationship between her church and the school is going, but she’s quick to refuse accolades for what they are doing at Brook Avenue.

“It’s not about us,” she said. “It’s about God’s love for each of us.”

The relationship between the two entities has not gone unnoticed, though.

Columbus Avenue Baptist Church and Brook Avenue Elementary School received the Award of Excellence at Tuesday night’s Waco Independent School District Celebration of Community, which honored 25 years of partnerships between schools and the community across the district.

“It’s pretty amazing to see the extent of the commitment and dedication the people at Columbus Avenue have for the children at Brook Avenue,” said Kay Metz, Waco ISD director of development and community partnerships.

Metz said Columbus Avenue and Brook Avenue have an ideal partnership because the mentors and other church members who have gotten involved from all walks of life and their efforts and involvement have affected every aspect of the school.

The church got the ball rolling a couple of years ago when it became involved with Kids Hope USA, an organization that promotes and supports one-on-one student mentoring through church/school partnerships.

The Waco ISD Partners in Education specialist paired the church up with Brook Avenue in the middle of last year. School officials were expecting six to eight mentors to become regular faces on the campus.

Training large groups

Broaddus trained 40 people to be mentors in January 2009 and another group in the summer. Using the Kids Hope USA model, she talked to them about the impact they can have just spending time with a student and how to structure their hour to get the most out of it.

Broaddus already has a list of 20 to 25 church members who want to attend training this summer to become mentors next year.

“It has provided us with a vehicle to get ourselves into the community and serve the people around us because that’s what God calls us all to do,” she said.

Mentors spend at least one hour a week with their students, but some show up almost every day, as long as there is something they can help with around the school, Brook Avenue principal Jessica Hicks said.

Christy Bowling, a counselor at the school, matched up each mentor with a student, taking into account the child’s needs and interests and the mentor’s skills and experiences.

The mentors help with school work, even taking direction from the student’s teacher on certain areas that the student needs to practice.

But they also play games and toss around a football — and one student even learned to knit.

The one-on-one attention is something a lot of students need, Hicks said, but it’s sometimes hard for teachers to provide when they have a class of 22 children.

“The message it sends to them is, ‘You’re valuable,’ ” Bowling said.

The mentors take their duty seriously, sticking to appointments they make with their student. If for some reason mentors had to interrupt their involvement, Broaddus said, the church would find another mentor to stand in or take their place with the student.

“We would not start something that would ever make a child feel abandoned,” Broaddus said.

Hicks said the bond that has formed between mentor and student is impressive. Mentors have learned their students’ needs and bought their own materials to use while working with them.

Others already are asking if they will be able to see their student over the summer.

One mentor recently asked Hicks about the welfare of the students who live in nearby apartments that are being closed down. The mentor was concerned about where the students would move and if there was anything the school could do to help.

‘Fight like parents’

“They fight like parents for these kids,” Hicks said.

She said the mentors coming into the school is a lot like a form of parental involvement.

“It’s not taking the place of a parent, I’d say it’s more like a partnership with the parent,” she said.

The mentors are in touch with the parents, and some parents have expressed how much they value the mentor’s relationship with their child, Hicks said.

Some families who have moved into a different school zone have decided to drive them back to Brook Avenue every day rather than change schools and lose the child’s mentor, she said.

The church’s involvement isn’t limited to working with kids.

During an intense week of state testing this year, church members provided lunch for teachers, decorated the teacher’s lounge and supplied the staff with snacks and little notes of encouragement.

“We just started calling them our little TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) angels,” Hicks said. “They did everything they could to make the teachers smile and make their day easier.”

The Partners in Education program is flexible, Metz said, and there are all types of levels of involvement. She encourages any group, business or church with questions about the program to call 755-9510.

“It’s not a financial requirement,” Metz said. “We think it’s people who are going to make the difference in children’s lives.”

wgragg@wacotrib.com

757-6901