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Catching Kids Before They Fall Part 5 SEATTLE-At 3 p.m., a dozen yellow cabs queue up in front of T.T. Minor Elementary School. Kids scramble to climb in as drivers wait. You might expect kids who get exclusive, door-to-door transportation to be among the city's elite. Not so. These kids, many of them recent immigrants, are some of the poorest. Their homes are the tenements and shelters of the central city. Many move often from place to place, school to school, as their families struggle to get by. Keeping these kids anchored to a single school is a district commitment here. Even if it means forking over a few taxi fares.
"A lot of these kids have been exposed to domestic violence and they're shuffled around, living with an aunt or uncle or foster parent-maybe living in a shelter," says Terry Schuler, coordinator of a Big Sisters mentoring program funded by SafeFutures. "School may be the only consistent thing in their life."
Through her work in area schools, Schuler tries to tip the asset scale a bit further in kids' favor. When teachers or counselors see a little girl they think could benefit from exposure to a positive role model, they give Schuler a call. "Usually," Schuler says, "it's a girl with great potential. There's just something in her life that's hindering it."
Schuler interviews volunteer mentors to find just the right match. That's how Nina Beach met Tonyckau (say ton-EE-ka).
A successful African American woman, Beach felt a responsibility to give something back to her community. Two years ago, she began mentoring seven-year-old Tonyckau when it looked like the first-grader might not be promoted to second grade.
Recalls Beach: "Her parents were separated. Her mom was into drugs. Tonyckau was caring for her one-year-old sister and cleaning the house."
Once a week, Beach tutored her "little sister." They played games. They laughed and talked. Things were going well. Then Tonyckau's mother landed in jail. The girl was sent to her grandmother's. It wasn't long before old patterns returned. Tonyckau stopped doing her homework and started acting out in class.
"The weird thing was," says Beach, "while she was living with her grandmother, her hair was always combed and she always had decent clothes on. Yet all she could think about was how she wanted to be with her mother. She loved her mother who didn't comb her hair, who didn't care if she had any clothes to wear or food to eat."
There was one important ground rule Beach and Tonyckau had made at the start of their relationship: no playtime until schoolwork is done. The little girl began to balk at the rule. One day, she started to cry and said she never got to do anything fun. But Beach held the line. "I said, 'Tonyckau, your homework is more important. We can't do anything fun unless you finish your homework.'" Then, she left.
The next week, Tonyckau's homework was done. What's more, her teacher reported that she had behaved well in class. All because she valued her relationship with Beach.
"I gave her a big hug," says Beach, "and told her we could do anything she wanted since her homework was done." Tonyckau chose to read to Beach for the next hour.
Schuler points out the significance of this. "A lot of these kids have trouble reading," she says. "In the first months of mentoring, the kids want you to think that they're the smartest person in the whole wide world. They don't want to read to you because they don't want to show you that they can't do that. They'll tell you the most incredible stories: 'Terry, did you know that Michael's sister said that her father's buying her a horse?' when the family they're talking about is living in a shelter."
Mentors need to let their young friends know they like and accept them for who they are, Schuler says. It's the relationship, more than the tutoring, that's the critical component for success.
"Research tells us," Schuler says, "that if you have more assets in your life, even one or two, you're more likely to succeed."
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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