CALL ME GRANNY: SENIOR VOLUNTEERS HELPING AT-RISK KIDS by Farrah Hale • photos by Guy Stevens
The Foster Grandparent program is a hidden staple of the Escambia and Santa Rosa county communities. The program’s group of dedicated volunteers operate behind the scenes as they quietly help students in classrooms, Head Start programs, and after-school care programs across the region. Foster Grandparents can choose which program to participate in and spend their time helping students with worksheets, homework, lesson reinforcement, and perhaps most importantly, behavioral challenges.
14 COMING OF AGE WINTER 2021
Just around the corner, at Longleaf Elementary in Escambia County, the Foster Grandparent program from Council on Aging has helped multiple generations of students. Longleaf Elementary first implemented the program more than 15 years ago. Unfortunately, regardless of the program’s impact, Longleaf currently only has enough volunteers to have one Foster Grandparent in their pre-k program and one in a firstgrade classroom. They need more. Troy Brown, the principal of Longleaf Elementary, emphasized the importance of the Foster Grandparents, especially now, after COVID-19 has changed everything. “A lot of these students—the majority of them are behind and they’ve lost a lot of ground, and they have a long way to go to get back on grade level,” Brown said. “Some of them are more than one grade level behind.”
That’s why Foster Grandparents are so essential—they help propel these students in the right direction. Like most of us living in this untracked and dismantled time, young children, especially students, experience the same burdens of the world on their shoulders as adults. These kids do not know how to process the ever-changing world around them. Parents and teachers can only do so much. Believe it or not, the Foster Grandparents help to navigate these emotions adding an extra layer of comfort to the students. “If you have a kid having a bad day, not necessarily with academics, but the stress of life, sometimes that grandmotherly presence is helpful,” Brown said. “I mean, how did you feel when it was time for you to visit your grandparents?” A quick breakdown of how COVID-19 altered the lives of Longleaf Elementary pupils:
