Every other day senior Connor Straddling gets in his car and heads to multiple elementary schools to mentor younger students as part of a social skills program called Peers. Any senior can be a part of this program but Straddling has exceeded the Peers teacher Wendy Hamann’s expectations by doubling up and taking on two classes, which means mentoring twice as many younger students.

“We will go to the elementary schools, Early Learning Centers and middle schools and just talk to kids who have been recommended by their teachers who maybe have problems at home or need help with social skills. We’ll go there and we will spend 30 minutes to an hour with those kids. You take one class and you take two to four kids but I am taking two classes, so I have eight kids,” Straddling said.

Hamann is thrilled to see one of her students take the initiative and run with it, especially because she lets students choose everything.

“They get to choose all of it. It is important to me that the kids in my program get to choose who they work with. Maybe kids want to go back to their old elementary school. Lots of times students will pick kids who are going through a similar experience. We have a lot of kids who are dealing with family stress, a lot of kids are struggling with resolving conflicts and having good positive relationships and sometimes they maybe connect with something on that need level,” Hamann said.

Hamann thinks that is amazing that Straddling is taking two of her classes because she believes that he is an excellent influence and knows how to handle the kids very well.

“He doesn’t even recognize that it is such a cool giving thing, which I think is really cool. But Connor is very calming but also very strong and I hope he ends up doing something with kids,” Hamann said.

Hamann hit it right on the mark because according to Straddling this program changed his life and made him want to become a teacher and work with kids.

Straddling says that in order to do that though you have to have the skills to work with kids which he has learned to do through the program.

“You have to have patience, be able to repeat things because they like to do the same thing over and over again, and you have to be able to have a positive reinforcement,” Stradling said.