93.3 JAMMZZZ

After being so stagnant in my writing, I'm really trying to update this more regularly.

Katy (the most awesome mentor in the entire world) and I have been trying to start a new mentor program at the school. We are a communications magnet, so it made sense to expand the relationships with our business partners in the communications field and to also gain new ones.

So we devised a program where professionals in the communications field (journalists, tv anchors, radio personalities, etc) could come in and work with a group of students to produce some kind of advertisement for a local non-profit, thus making it a service learning mentoring program (sounds fancy, huh?)
Well, like many projects, it hit a few bumps in the road. Even I was wondering who we could get to come into the school in the middle of the day to work with these students. Where would they find the time? Would they even care about a school with in a neighborhood like ours? The questions went on. But Katy sincerely has the most "we can do this" attitude of maybe anyone I know. While I sit there stressing about the big picture "where to begin? " "How will this ever get done?" She's already ten steps ahead of me taking care of the details and organizing a plan to execute this. It's very helpful to me working with someone who can focus on the step by step process of things because I tend to see the big picture without taking time to consider details. We make a good team.

So long story short, the program started on Tuesday and it went better than I could have imagined. We had someone from the local newspaper, someone in the advertising business, someone from the local news station, and two local DJs from the students favorite "hip hop" radio station 93.3.

That's right, Charleston's very own "Baby J and Tessa" from the 93.3 JAMZ morning show. You would have thought that we got Jay Z and Mary J Blige. The kids went nuts. They couldn't believe these celebrities that they listen to every day on the radio took time to come hang out with them. They had a group of three students and helped them produce a radio PSA for mentoring. The kids took turns saying what their mentors mean to them and then they Tessa and Baby J's voice saying how cool mentoring was. As mentor coordinator, I was so touched by the entire thing. It's so important for kids to have mentors, but these were real people that they look up to and think are really cool. I even heard "Ronald" a kid I had to kick out of the Recycling Team for bad behavior ask them how to be DJS and Baby J told him he was an English Major in College and Ronald was all wide eyed and like "YOU went to college?" And Baby J goes "Of course I did, and you can too"

You can't make this stuff up.