Elbridge Gale’s Khessia Jean-Baptiste Has Created A Unique Mentoring Program
Story by Chris Felker
Photos by Abner Pedraza
Now in her seventh year at Elbridge Gale Elementary School, teacher Khessia Jean-Baptiste is carving out a special space for students who lag behind their peers.
Jean-Baptiste is teaching familiar lessons — ones she had to learn herself as a child — to a select group of these children as part of twin mentorship programs she recently started at the Wellington school.
Growing up in New York, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, she was drawn to education at an early age, learning skills that later would come in handy helping her mother run a home daycare facility.
“My mother always taught smaller kids, and at church, she ran the children’s ministries, so I would always see her in her behavior management style. She was a pretty big influence,” Jean-Baptiste recalled. “And then I realized that I was just good at it.”
She quickly learned that education would be a pathway to success in the United States. “My parents really, really pushed education, and put a lot on me to get it, because they weren’t English speakers,” Jean-Baptiste said.
She arrived in Florida with her family in 2000, when she was 14 year old. She completed her education locally, graduating from Wellington High School and attending Palm Beach Community College (now Palm Beach State College) before earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Florida Atlantic University.
“During my time at FAU, because I was in Wellington, they placed me at Elbridge Gale for my student teaching,” Jean-Baptiste said. “The teachers I worked with, the third-grade staff, we got along really well. They could see that I was really driven and dedicated and wanted to do well, so they recommended that I try to get a job there.”
With support from her future colleagues, Principal Gail Pasterczyk offered Jean-Baptiste a position.
Jean-Baptiste stayed teaching third grade for a while, until she ventured out on a different path. “I started studying for the Exceptional Student Education certification so I could become an ESE teacher,” she said.
After completing the training, she taught half regular classes and half ESE classes until she decided that she wanted to give her full attention to ESE classes.
“My classes are for kids who have learning disabilities or some other exceptionality. Usually it’s the ones who are slower learners, those with emotional behavior disorders or some other health impairment that affects their ability to learn at the same rate or the same content as other students,” she said.
Jean-Baptiste explained that she is drawn to helping those children. “I like trying to find different ways to present things to them so they get it, because when they finally get it, it means so much to them,” she said.
But she came to a realization. “After being exposed to more grade levels, especially fifth grade, after I finished my first year with fifth grade, I felt concerned that some of the students were going on to middle school without having what we call ‘soft skills,’ like self-control and time management,” Jean-Baptiste said. “They didn’t really know how to do a big project from start to finish without having me help them a lot.”
It’s a problem she recalled from her own formative years. “My parents didn’t really teach me time management, and so I struggled with it a lot,” Jean-Baptiste said. “I knew that there were other kids who always just seemed to have their projects turned in on time. As I got older, I realized that I need a planner. I need to set small goals.”
With this idea in mind, she created programs to fill this need. In 2013-14, she instituted the GOLD program for girls, followed this school year by the TAGS program for boys.
“GOLD stands for Goal-Oriented Ladies of Distinction. We had a small group of about 15 girls, and I had about five or six mentors, and everybody at school was extremely receptive to it,” Jean-Baptiste said. “I knew that we’d have to start this for boys as well. So this year, we started the TAGS program, which stands for The Association of Gentlemen Scholars.”
The small group programs cater to girls who are often quiet and don’t advocate for themselves or ask for help, and boys who are often tardy, have disciplinary problems and are under-achieving. They are matched up with mentors from among about a dozen of Jean-Baptiste’s fellow teachers. She also invites outside speakers, all adult professionals, to address to the groups.
“They talk to them about what they do, try to instill in them the importance of education and being motivated and responsibility and having your own drive and not always having people telling you what to do,” Jean-Baptiste said.
The students meet with their mentors a few times a week, just to discuss problems they’re having, situations they’re dealing with and any social or emotional difficulties they’re facing. They’ll often role-play to learn different ways of coping with life’s setbacks.
“I definitely like to focus on the social and emotional learning, because kids are smart. They learn a lot. If we’re not intentionally giving them positive social things to pick up on, they’re going to pick up on the negative,” Jean-Baptiste said.
For girls, the mentoring focuses on esteem-building, goal-setting, learning how to navigate social situations, making more friends and maintaining those friendships, even social etiquette and dining etiquette. For boys, the lesson sets are a bit different: self-control, different ways to solve conflicts, the value of apologizing, being accountable for your behavior, dealing with frustrations and etiquette.
Jean-Baptiste is planning an end-of-year luncheon where the students can invite someone important to them and must RSVP and dress up.
All together, these activities add up to life and attitude training, not just education. And Jean-Baptiste thrives on seeing all the parts come together in her students before they head off to their next phase of education.
“My biggest reward is seeing the kids enjoy learning,” she said. “It is hard to enjoy learning these days. The way the curriculum is changing is great for them; it’s really going to prepare them for college. But some of it is kind of boring. I strive to help them get interested in it. I love to see kids happy in school.”
