You just might see them sitting across from each other in the popular back space of Rise Up on Dover Street. Chances are, given the cold weather, they’re sipping hot chocolate. Here we have a boy and his mentor, Lizardo Santos (age 12) and Jeremy Hillyard (age 30). Listen. They are speaking English, though they could just as easily be speaking Spanish. Jeremy has taught Spanish at Easton High School for seven years. Named Easton High School Teacher of the Year in Spring 2016, he teaches all levels of Spanish, including AP. (He also coaches the school’s It’s Academic quiz-competition team.) Seventh-grader Lizardo, born in the United States, speaks Spanish at home with his mom and sister, Azuceli. The family hails from Guatemala.
Lizardo is a very gentle, polite, and attentive boy; Jeremy, as befits a teacher, is patient, kind, encouraging, and quick with humor. Jeremy and Lizardo were “matched” by Talbot Mentors in March. Their banter and ease—in English, in Spanish—would suggest that they’ve been in each other’s lives far longer.
“I want to use my language skills to be productive,” Jeremy says, adding, “in a meaningful way. There’s a real need for bilingual support in our community.”
Jeremy and Lizardo generally see each other once a week. “I took him to the first movie ever in his life: Zootopia,” says Jeremy. “Since then we’ve seen Angry Birds, Finding Dory, Secret Life of Pets (‘that was really fun,” says Lizardo), and Storks.” (Indeed, mentors who mentor children under the age of 14 often can tell you all about the latest kids’ movies.)
Another favorite mentor/mentee haunt is Kiln Born (everybody still calls it Clay Bakers). On a visit in the summer, Lizardo chose a shark to glaze. He painted the body blue and the tail black. “The teeth were red,” Jeremy says. “That was the really scary part.”
A special treat for Lizardo—and Jeremy—was the Pitbull concert in Washington, DC, at the Verizon Center. “It was at night,” says Lizardo, who was familiar with the artist’s Latin American–style hip hop. “It was my first concert. Seeing him sing was really cool,” Lizardo says, eyes wide.
Jeremy’s fluency in Spanish makes it easy for him to communicate with Lizardo’s mom. In a twist of linguistics, she said to Jeremy, the first time she met him, that she hoped he could teach Lizardo more Spanish!
“Recently she told me she wanted to get Internet,” Jeremy recalls,” but didn’t know how to go about it. I called Easton Utilities and got the information she needed.” (Pre-Internet in the Santos household, Lizardo and Jeremy would use Rise Up’s free wi-fi.)
“We got Internet on November 11th,” Lizardo pipes in. He uses it primarily for doing homework. His cell phone is more for play. “We love Pokémon GO,” Jeremy says.
Back to Rise Up. One afternoon, Jeremy and Lizardo got a behind-the-scenes look at the coffee-bean-roasting area. “Whatever we do, I like to have there be an educational link,” says Jeremy. “That’s the teacher in me—or something.” At Rise Up, the two learned about harvesting the beans, the concept of fair trade, how the beans are roasted, and, most pertinent of all, where the coffee comes from—places like Nicaragua, Costs Rica, and Guatemala.
Come June, Lizardo, his sister, and their mom will be heading to Guatemala to be with family. It will be Lizardo’s first time on a plane. Given his thoughts of possibly becoming a pilot when he grows up, this should be quite an experience. In the meanwhile, the seventh-grader’s favorite subject in school is social studies. He loves learning about the world. To be sure, Jeremy is making Lizardo’s world a little wider with each encounter.
How do Jeremy and Lizardo land on activities? “Jeremy asks me what I’d like to do,” says Lizardo. “One time he told me he wanted to go fishing,” Jeremy recalls. “I’m not a fisherman, but I have a friend who is. He used to teach outdoor education to kids,” Jeremy continues, “so I asked if he would take us fishing, and he did.”
“It was awesome,” says Lizardo. Catching a fish was another first for him. He brought the catfish home. “My mom made fish soup,” says Lizardo, pride seasoning his words.
“Lizardo told me he wanted to learn about cooking. We talked about what we should try and decided to go with a three-milk cake—very popular in Central America.” The two went shopping for ingredients and did their baking at the Talbot Mentors office, which has had a full kitchen since the spring. The cake turned out great.
Jeremy and Lizardo, who love sports, recently went on a Talbot Mentors outing to see the Wizards play in Washington, DC. While most mentor/mentee time is spent one-on-one, Talbot Mentors offers special programs, from following a corn maze in the fall to Wednesday after-school yoga, crafts, and martial arts sessions.
Jeremy’s enthusiasm for being a mentor is clear—and contagious. “It’s really neat. I’ve grown as a person. . .being able to be there for somebody and being helpful,” he offers. “That’s what makes mentoring so gratifying. It’s what drives me.”
To be sure, most mentors you talk to will tell you that they could well be getting more out of the experience than the kids are. But one look at Lizardo as he looks at Jeremy tells a story of mutual respect and happiness. It is a fine, fine match.
When asked to describe Jeremy, Lizardo says, “Cool. Nice. Awesome.
As their time at Rise Up winds down on a wintry Sunday, Jeremy turns to Lizardo and says, “I really like hanging out with you.”
Sometimes it’s that simple.
For more information, to make a contribution, or to volunteer as a mentor, call Talbot Mentors at 410-770-5999 or visit www.talbotmentors.org.
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