News from The Mentoring Partnership of Long Island!

My husband and I mentor two sixth grade boys at ShelterRock Elementary School. During our weekly hour together, the four of us normally get down to business right away. We struggle through math problems (with me struggling the hardest) and social studies. We try to save some time near the end of our sessions to just hang out, talk, play cards or shoot hoops. Typically, I am exclusively and joyfully absorbed in our little group of four and I often don't notice the interactions between the other mentors and mentees in our program.

Maybe because it was the first day that we were able to take the kids outdoors and our two mentees were running around the playground and tossing balls at each other, that this past week I took special notice of the unique relationships that have formed in our mentoring group over the past year.

While my husband tossed balls with the boys, I wandered back into the mentoring room. I watched Jasmine, a shy and ineffably sweet third-grader and her mentor Maxine, who is recovering from recent, painful hip surgery. Maxine arrived in the mentoring room limping with her cane, but with the broadest and sweetest smile you can imagine. Jasmine's face lit up and for the next hour she and her mentor seemed completely unencumbered as they shared their week's stories and played their favorite games.

I watched James, an intense third-grader who seems always to be afraid that he is missing something. When his mentor Carol arrived and they went off to a private corner just to talk and to play a game of checkers, all of James' anxiety seemed to melt away.

I watched Jerry, a brilliant but highly distractible sixth-grader, move nervously around the mentoring room until his mentor Barbara arrived. With Barbara there to help, Jerry calmly undertook the challenging task of organizing his book bag. They finished homework and got down to some serious board games. Jerry seemed comfortable and peaceful with his mentor there.

And I watched Susan, a mentor in our group for years, who gives abundantly of herself no matter the occasion -- Halloween and birthday parties, costumes and art projects, healthy and delicious snacks -- only the very best for our mentoring kids. Now she is mentoring Estefania, a beautiful and poised fourth- grader, and Elizabeth, a girl that Susan has followed from fifth grade to the Middle School mentoring program.

It seems that all the mentoring relationships in our group have their own touch of magic.

This week I got a call from my first mentee, Monique. Several years ago she moved to Queens with her family and now she's in high school. We don't see each other as often as we'd like to. But with spring vacation coming up we are making plans to get together. To be a part of this child's transition from a very insecure, problematic girl to a lovely young lady determined to go to college has been a powerful experience that will stay with me always.

You ask yourself, how much impact can you really have? Yet, there are times when the answer seems clear. When you see a child who has emerged from the dark and desperate tunnel you first found her in, and there she is -- comfortable with herself and full of hope and excitement about her future -- it feels wonderful to have had some part in that. It's an experience I would not trade for the world.

Laurie Hershey is a practicing criminal defense attorney

on Long Island, the mother of two grown children and a

mentor at Shelter Rock Elementary School in Manhasset

for the past seven years.