LEBANON — Lilly Pare and Helena Mielcarz hit an exercise ball back and forth in an activity room at Hanover Street School in Lebanon.
The goal, as the girls explained, was to keep the ball from hitting the ground. When that proved challenging (the ball was quite large), they agreed the ball could bounce at least once.
“Rawwwrrrrr!” Lilly, 9, shouted as she bounced the ball to Mielcarz, 17, who laughed in response.
Lilly, who is in third grade, and Mielcarz, who is in 12th grade, met through the Big Buddy Club, a new program that pairs Lebanon High School students with Hanover Street Elementary school students. The two schools share a campus on Hanover Street, making the weekly meetups between the 40 big-and-little buddy pairs easy to arrange.
“She’s active,” Lilly said about what she likes best about Mielcarz.
Since they started hanging out at the end of September, they’ve discovered they have quite a bit in common. Lilly, for example, likes jump roping, skating and sleeping.
“I also really like sleeping,” said Mielcarz, of Lebanon, a ski jumper.
‘Opening up’
Melanie Billings, a behavior support teacher at Hanover Street School, started the buddy program during the 2024-2025 school year. Originally, the idea was to pair fourth graders with high school students to help ease the transition to fifth-grade at Lebanon Middle School.
While the little buddies might not be able to see their big buddies at Lebanon Middle School next year, which is located more than two miles away on Moulton Avenue, they were able to speak to someone who had been through the transition before.
For “most of the kids, it’s a big deal moving from fourth grade to the middle school,” Billings said.
For last year’s pilot program, six high school students were paired with six fourth-graders, and the partnership proved popular. Soon Billings was hearing from other teachers who wanted to create matches for their own students.
Lebanon High School students who served as big buddies that first year started thinking about ways to expand the program and at the start of the current school year, turned it into a club. It quickly swelled to 40 high school students who were all paired with elementary school mentees.
Now elementary students join the program through requests from their parents, as well as from referrals from elementary school educators. It’s also expanded beyond fourth grade to include students in kindergarten through third grade. Lebanon High students in any grade serve as big buddies. There is not a similar program at the city’s other elementary school, Mount Lebanon School, at this time.
“This program supports students who would benefit from building stronger social connections with their peers,” Billings wrote in an email. “Some students especially enjoy having a ‘Big Brother’- or ‘Big Sister’-type mentor who provides encouragement, friendship, and a positive role model.”
The little buddies tend to be a little shy, especially before they first meet their big buddies, Hanover Street School Principal Leah Wheelan said.
“After that first meeting is done, it’s something they look forward to,” Wheelan said.
That’s been the case for Yiting Tian and Taven Pittman, who spend about 30 minutes together once a week during the school day. Sometimes, Tian joins Taven in his kindergarten classroom, while other times the two spend time in a separate instructional space. Students do not miss academic instruction to spend time with their big buddies; big buddies spend time with their little buddies during their free periods.
Tian, a senior, and Taven started a recent meetup with a game of Guess Who? before taking out construction paper and crayons. Taven has been working on his handwriting skills and likes making cards for family members.
“What are you drawing?” Taven asked, looking over at Tian.
“What do you think I’m drawing?” Tian replied.
“Grass,” Taven correctly replied, then suggested his buddy add some flowers and people to his picture.
“What’s that?” Tian asked Taven, pointing at his drawing.
“Mud,” Taven replied, as he focused intently on the brown crayon he used on blue paper.
“Do you like mud?” Tian asked.
“Yes!” Taven replied enthusiastically before getting back to work.
When they first met, Taven was quite shy. Sometimes Taven spoke quietly and Tian would have to ask him to repeat himself. As the months went on, that started to change.
“I feel like as I get to know him more, he’s opening up,” Tian said. “Definitely more talkative. He’s telling me how he feels, which is definitely a big step.”
Building confidence
The meetups happen even if the little buddy had a rough day in their classroom, including any behavioral challenges, Wheelan said.
“It’s hard to build a relationship based on how your day goes,” Wheelan said. Consistency, she said, is the point. Educators want the little buddies to see that their big buddies “show up for them no matter what is going on,” and will be there to support them through whatever challenges they face.
“I think it’s equally beneficial, if not more, for our high school kids,” Wheelan said. It gives students an opportunity to serve as mentors during a time in their lives when they might not have the most confidence as they’re facing choices about what they will do after high school.
Other mentors, including Mielcarz, want to become teachers themselves and being a big buddy gives them a chance to spend time with kids one-on-one.
“I’ve learned all these kids are so different,” said Mielcarz, who is planning on studying special education at the University of Vermont next year. Some communicate better in group situations while others are more comfortable one-on-one, for example.
Tian sees the Big Buddy program as a way to serve his community and also help children who might struggle at first with school, like he did. Tian, who speaks Mandarin at home, attended Hanover Street School and for a time was enrolled in English Language Learning classes.
“It was kind of difficult to get accustomed” to school, Tian said. “It would have been nice to have a role model to follow.”
Providing support
While school officials haven’t collected any hard evidence about the effectiveness of the program, Wheelan and Billings said the kids who have high school mentors tend to come back to the classroom in good spirits. Parents have also told teachers that their children like having an “older kid” as a friend.
The relationship can even help cultivate an enthusiasm for school that some students struggle with. That’s the case for Lilly, her mom, Whitney Thibodeau said in an email. Her older son, Odin, got involved in the Big Buddy program last year and is now in his second year. When Lilly had an opportunity to participate this year, both mom and daughter were excited.
“I thought having a big buddy for her would be great, because it gives her something to look forward to,” Thibodeau said, adding that sometimes Lilly doesn’t like going to school in the morning. That’s not the case on the days she gets to see Mielcarz. “When her big buddy comes, she comes home so excited and wants to tell me all about it.”
Lilly tells her mom about the crafts she and Mielcarz work on and the games they play. She mentions how nice Mielcarz is and how much she enjoys spending time with her.
In addition to helping students prepare to transition to middle school, the program also has supported students through other transitions in their lives.
Last year, as a fourth-grader at Hanover Street School, Derrick Huang, who is now at Lebanon Middle School, was paired with Tian. Derrick and his family had moved to Lebanon from China at the start of the last school year. One of Derrick’s teachers told his mom, Sijie Rong, about the Big Buddy program and she thought it would be a good fit.
“It was a big change for him,” Rong said in a phone interview, adding that at the time she was pregnant with her second son, who is now 8 months old. “It was pretty stressful for him.”
Derrick and Tian connected over their shared love of planes. Tian, then a junior, took Derrick to see the plane he was helping to build as part of the “Take Flight” program at Lebanon High School.
“I love the program because I could get free time to play with my buddy,” Derrick said in a phone interview. Sometimes they’d play the card game Uno together or work on a puzzle. The 30 or 40 minutes they spent together every week “went by so quick” and he looked forward to seeing him again each week.
On the days Derrick spent time with Tian, he’d come home and tell Rong all about their time together, including when they built a foam airplane.
Tian “gave (Derrick) a lot of motivation, to put more effort into the area that he wants to pursue in the future,” Rong said. She also said that because both Derrick and Tian are Asian, it helped her son to see “‘if he can do this, I can do it too’.”
Editor’s note: Lilly Pare is in third grade. A previous version of this story included an incorrect grade level for Lilly.