BENNINGTON, Neb. (KMTV) —
- TeamMates mentors meet with mentees on a weekly basis to help build confidence, friendships, and social skills.
- At Bennington South Middle School, mentees August Cruse and Kennedy Hughes talk about how meeting with their mentors Blake Tompson and Brenda Ferris has helped them.
- If your interested in becoming a mentor, you can apply at teammates.org.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Building confidence, friendships, and social skills. At Bennington South Middle School something amazing is happening. There's a program that encourages kids to get outside of their comfort zones by working with mentors.
Meet Blake Thompson and August Cruse. Since September, the pair has been meeting once a week, every week, for around 30 minutes.
"When we first scheduled, I asked him what day he wanted to meet and he said let's go on Tuesdays cause Tuesdays suck,” said Blake.
But now Tuesdays aren't so bad.
"It was just - I like people to talk to and I also don't like sitting in the lunchroom because it's so loud but I think that the main reason was just having someone to talk to was kind of important, especially like now in middle school,” said August.
Navigating a new school with new people can be scary which is one of the reasons why Kennedy Hughes wanted to join the program.
That program is TeamMates, the longest running mentor program in the state.
"Before I joined the program I was like shy and I wasn't able to express myself a lot but then Brenda told me that I’d be fine either way so then I started expressing myself a lot more and that helped me out,” said Kennedy.
Brenda Ferris is Kennedy's mentor. They've been meeting for two years.
"The great thing is like even if I’m having not such a great day and I see her little smile it's super cool to get to connect with her once a week and play games,” said Brenda.
These days we're talking a lot about mentoring, as January is National Mentoring Month and February is Nebraska Mentoring Month.
With that, we wanted to see some of the lifelong friendships being made across our community. Friendships like Blake and August.
"I think with talking to Blake, I’ve kind of found this new confidence that is also really great,” said August.
And Kennedy and Brenda, who shared a high five after finishing a game they were playing.
