“This is the kind of program where you go in thinking you are going to make a contribution, but you end up benefitting as much as the child does,” said Katherine Burt, as she described her duties as a girl’s mentor. “This doesn’t require a huge commitment of time, but you do have to be consistent, and the rewards are tremendous.”
Katherine and her husband, Dr. Woodie Burt, have been mentoring a brother and sister for six years, and they are continuing to mentor the students once a week at Hannibal Middle School, except when school is not in session. The Burts said they go to the lunch with their students and visit with their friends, adding that other mentors do this.
Woodie said “one of the touching things was to go and serve as a mentor to the young boy I was assigned and having other children asking ‘How can I get a mentor?’ Your heart breaks, knowing the child wants someone to be his friend, and there are not enough volunteers.”
“I think if more people knew what a wonderful program it is, they would jump at the chance” to become a mentor, Katherine said.
Woodie is president of Hannibal-LaGrange College, where Katherine is assistant professor of English.
Costs ‘nothing but your time’
“I think mentoring is a gift you can give a child that doesn’t cost you anything except your time,” said Mary Novara, who serves as community coordinator with the sponsoring Families and Communities Together (FACT) organization. FACT began its mentoring program in 2000, and it now has 45 mentors in Palmyra, and 30 in Hannibal. The children mentored range in age from kindergarten to grade 12.
January is National Mentors Month, Novara explained, and she hopes more adults will volunteer to become a mentor. They may go to the FACT office to complete an application. All applicants must pass a Missouri State Highway Patrol background check. Information is available at the FACT office, 142 Jaycee Drive, at (573) 221-2285.To qualify as a mentor, an adult “has to like kids and be a caring adult who wants to give of their time and help improve the self-esteem of the child,” Novara said.
The Burts became interested in mentoring in 2004, when a FACT representative attended a Lions Club meeting and made an appeal, Woodie said. “I was impressed with the program and went home and talked with Katherine, and we decided we would give it a try.”
“We have always liked kids and thought it would be a worthwhile opportunity,” Katherine said. After completing the application process, they attended an informational training session, where, she said, “they covered everything” needed.
“They matched us up according to our interests and their (the children’s) interests,” she said. “Something emphasized to us at the time was we needed to be reliable, and needed to be committed to doing this.”
Katherine’s girl was in first grade, and her brother, assigned to Woodie, was in second grade. “The children warmed up to us immediately,” he said.
She agreed, “they really did accept us as mentors. ... Our purpose is to be a friend, it is not an academic purpose. It is to be their buddy.” In the beginning she read stories. Mentors “can help with assignments or just play games and read. One day we decorated cookies.”
Woodie explained his boy was already learning to play chess with his grandfather, “so we played chess.”
Although they agreed to mentor for one year, he said, “we were encouraged to work with the children beyond the one-year agreement. We enjoyed it so much, we asked each of the children if they would like for us to continue the following year, and they agreed they wanted us to. We consider them friends.”
“When they were going into middle school, we asked them — knowing it could be more awkward in middle school — and they were eager for us to continue.”
