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South San ISD student mentoring program draws national attention

By , San Antonio Express-NewsUpdated
South San High School student and mentor/tutor Michaela Valdez, 15, uses Play-Doh to help pre-kindergartners Andrea Hernandez (from left), Jordan Rodriguez and Ray Santiago in a classroom at Kindred Elementary School.
South San High School student and mentor/tutor Michaela Valdez, 15, uses Play-Doh to help pre-kindergartners Andrea Hernandez (from left), Jordan Rodriguez and Ray Santiago in a classroom at Kindred Elementary School.Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News

SAN ANTONIO — South San High School student Michaela Valdez's freshman year didn't get off to the right start.

The 15-year-old hadn't performed well on a state standardized test, was failing algebra, and struggled to adapt to high school life.

But school officials saw an opportunity and asked her to participate in a mentoring program in which middle school and high school students who are at risk of dropping out of school tutor at-risk elementary students.

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The result: Michaela fell in love with tutoring. So much so, she said, she found the motivation to pull up her grades because she wanted to be a role model to the pre-kindergartners and kindergartners she was working with.

She said she also felt good using her program stipend to help her mom pay bills and fill up the gas tank to take her to school.

“I worried my tutees may ask if I was passing all my classes,” Michaela said. “And I wanted to say proudly that I was, and that I expect the same for them as they do for me.”

The San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association, or IDRA, founded the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program here 30 years ago. It grew from five local school districts to campuses as far away as Great Britain and Brazil, and remains in 35 schools nationwide today.

Last October, Coca-Cola awarded IDRA a $1 million grant to help bolster the program in schools in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. And on Wednesday morning, Kindred Elementary hosted about 30 people interested in bringing the Coca-Cola program to their schools. They came from Bexar County and across the United States, welcomed by interim Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra and South San trustees.

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South San Independent School District is the only local district that has funded the program continuously since it started. Most other districts have chosen not to in recent years, don't seem aware of it or have opted for other approaches to keep students from dropping out, IDRA officials said.

South San officials recognize they have a problem with students who drop out to work, or because they have lost motivation altogether. In some cases, they are undocumented and don't see a way to pay for college.

Last year, though, South San's annual dropout rate for high school students fell to 1.8 percent, lower than Texas' average of 3.4 percent, according to state data. Educators there say the mentoring program has helped. The district has 52 high school or middle school students mentoring 156 elementary students.

The visitors watched students including Michaela and Nicholas Alderete, 14, interacting with the younger ones. Michaela helped her pre-K kids, some classified as special-needs students, learn the alphabet by trying to make letters using Play-Doh. Nicholas used flash cards to teach third-graders multiplication tables.

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“They seemed really engaged and that's not always easy to do,” said Steve Sippel, an at-risk coordinator at Harlandale ISD. “Adults can't always draw it out of them like someone closer in age can.”

Each tutor is assigned three students to mentor for about an hour a day through the school year in order to build a relationship. The tutors at South San get paid $7.55 an hour and earn class credit, so they can do it during the school day.

The program can be funded through a school district's state or federal funding to reduce dropout rates, through IDRA grants, or by a community group that will sponsor it.

“You can't always see the impact on paper, but you see it in their confidence and how they start acting in the classroom,” said Norma De Hoyos, a third-grade teacher at Kindred. When Nicholas arrives in the morning to tutor her class, “the students get excited because they feel cool getting to hang out with a teenager,” De Hoyos said.

fvara-orta@express-news.net

Twitter: @fvaraorta

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Francisco Vara-Orta has been a reporter at the Express-News since February 2011. He has also worked as a staff writer and reporter for the Austin Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, Los Angeles Times, Austin American-Statesman, Laredo Morning Times and La Prensa, a bilingual newspaper in San Antonio. He holds a degree in English/Communication Arts and Latin American Studies from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. He describes himself as a proud Texan, born and raised in the Alamo City, circa 1984.