And the Gold Star goes to…

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Ms. Maria Hernandez’s classroom at E.M. Daggett Elementary. Her Junior Achievement volunteer, Aaron Jolly from Bank of America, is teaching the 2nd grade “Our Community” program to her students this semester. When I arrived at the school; I learned that Aaron had accidentally misplaced his JA bag earlier that week and did not have his materials available. Much to my surprise, he still wanted to teach the lesson! Even with no materials, and no volunteer guidebook; this was one of the best lessons I have ever seen taught. Aaron completed the lesson almost verbatim and had all of the students excited and engaged despite his lack of resources.

Ms. Hernandez has many bilingual students in her class at Daggett Elementary. Each week, she prepares a power point with all of the vocabulary words that correspond with Aaron’s Junior Achievement lesson. She makes sure her students understand all of the terminology in English before Aaron arrives to teach the students.

Aaron has been volunteering for Junior Achievement since the spring semester of 2007. Ms. Hernandez has participated in the program each spring since 2000. This is their second semester to work together!

We would like to extend a huge thank you to Aaron and Ms. Hernandez for their continued support of our programs and for going way above and beyond expectations. If you have a great volunteer story that you’d like to share – please email it to lclingman@jafortworth.org.