Brooke Point High School Students Founded "Dragons Helping Dragons" to Give Back to Their Elementary School
The group raised funds to buy Christmas presents for Stafford students.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Growing up in a military family, Adrian Ferrer never felt like he was part of a community until he attended Anthony Burns Elementary School in Stafford.
“We had moved around a lot, but my dad retired here, and this school played a big part in helping me feel like I was part of a community,” said Adrian, now a senior at Brooke Point High School.
So when he started thinking about ways to fill his time after stepping away from high school sports, he had the idea of giving back to his former elementary school.
Adrian asked some of his high school friends who’d also attended Anthony Burns if they would be interested in volunteering at the elementary school with him—and to a degree that he didn’t really expect, “they jumped on it,” he said.
That’s how Dragons Helping Dragons was born. Twice a week, some 30 high school students travel to Anthony Burns to help tutor kids in math and reading—and recently, the group raised more than $1,000 to buy Christmas presents for 22 students at Burns, Stafford Middle, and Brooke Point High School, through the county’s Angel Tree.
The Dragons delivered the gifts to Anthony Burns Elementary on Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s such a full circle moment,” said Adrian’s mom, Jennifer Ferrer, of watching her son, now on the verge of graduating high school, volunteer at his elementary school.
The Ferrers designed the Dragons Helping Dragons logo, which is featured on t-shirts the high school students wear when they visit the elementary school, together as a family. It depicts the school’s dragon mascot as it appeared when Adrian attended the school with the current dragon mascot.
Anthony Burns principal Caroline Goddard said school staff work very hard to build community.
“We want the kids to feel like this is their family away from home,” she said. Goddard was principal for Adrian’s and his best friend and Dragons Helping Dragons cofounder Nolan Parker’s last two years of elementary school, and she said it moves her to know that Anthony Burns did feel like a family to them.
Nolan said he loves being back in the elementary school every week. He said that even though he was young, the school gave him opportunities to be part of something bigger, such as delivering the morning announcements over the loudspeaker and being a member of the safety patrol.
Goddard said having the high school students help with the after-school tutoring has been a huge boost to the program. She said the high schoolers have been excellent tutors and that the elementary schoolers relate well to them, especially to the fact that so many of them are male—and more teachers are volunteering to tutor because they know the high schoolers will be there.
“So we can reach more students,” Goddard said. “It’s just been a huge, huge success.”
Adrian and Nolan are working to ensure that Dragons Helping Dragons continues once they graduate from high school, and they also hope other high schools in the county start similar programs.
“We want to continue and grow and help more Title I schools,” he said.
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