Last week I attended a mentoring conference hosted by the Homebuilders Institute. It was chock full of research and best practices. All conferences do their best to be informative and this one was especially well done. Nothing in those three days, however, held a candle to the youth panel: four young people with hopes and dreams telling a group of seasoned professionals what their mentor has meant to them. They talked about hardships, needing help, and the moment they decided they had what it takes.

They confirmed what we, at The Foundation, have been saying for years. Give a student one caring adult that they can count on no matter what to act as their springboard, and they can soar. That’s it: no magic, just devotion. All kids want their dreams to come true. They just need a champion standing by, ready to help them see around corners. No matter how we reform education, that will never change.

Sometime ago, my team asked me to start a blog for our website. I was hesitant. What can I add to the windstorm of conversation about education reform? What can I say about us and our students that can’t be found in our newsletters, videos or Facebook and Twitter accounts? But then I met those four young people, and Sheldon (a freshman at Bethune Cookman University) said something that made me realize; I don’t have to say anything, I just have to ask.

He said, about his mentor and his co-workers, “They showed us courtesy. At school ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are hard to come by.” What struck me wasn’t that teenagers can be rude to each other. Everyone knows that. It was the simplicity of what made a difference to him. No legislation, no regulation and no policy can reflect his basic desire for common courtesy. Moreover, no predictive tool can predict how far he can go on it.

So, here it is; my first blog. It’s a simple concept. I am going to randomly select a student. I am going to ask her, “What can adults do to make your school experience better?” Then I am going to write down their ideas and share them with you.

Let’s start with Jobs for Florida’s Graduates’ student Chelda, of Broward County. Chelda wants to get her massage therapy license after graduation. She is going to use the income she makes as a massage therapist to put herself through college so she can become a physical therapist. A pretty solid plan, I’d say.

When I asked Chelda what she recommended to make school better, she said “I’d like more understanding of different opinions.” She said “kids go to school to become something, not so they can be told what to think.” I asked her to give me some ways that would signal to her that she was being understood and valued. She said that she wants to see more activities in class. “Kids like to help each other, and we can learn from each other.” Finally, she said “classes are too short, they need to be longer - especially math.” I must admit, I smiled a bit at that one. Never on my best day of high school would I have said math needs to be longer!

So to education experts far and wide, from Chelda, consider more conversational, activity based learning and longer classes as you grapple with education reform.