The Texas sun shines bright above the students; there are very few clouds in the November sky. Leaves and acorns scatter the path. 

‘CRINKLE, CRACK’ sound out from under their sneakers. The ninth-graders cheerfully and eagerly walk toward Coulson Tough Elementary School. 

The mentors step into the building, grateful for the temporary cool that the air conditioning gives them. The younger children are ready for their mentors’ arrival so they can start their fun-filled activities: whether it be a small project, reading a book aloud- or writing a thank-you note to the local crossing guard, each project a lasting memory for the Conroe ISD students.

The Coulson Tough Mentorship Program was created in October of 2018 by former principal of the TWHS Ninth-Grade Campus, Jill Houser, with help from the former principal of Coulson Tough, Shawn Creswell. It pairs the freshman high school students with the neighboring elementary/intermediate students to give them something to look forward to during the year, as well as show them what it means to be a Highlander. 

Houser had been a part of a similar program at a junior high school where she had previously worked.

“She thought it was a lot of fun and [she] thought it was a worthwhile program to start when she came here as a principal,” current Assistant Principal of The Woodlands High School Ninth Grade Campus, Riqui Boyles said. “She’s super happy that it’s still going on. It was one of her favorite things to do.”

Houser’s mission behind the program was about mentorship and trying to foster a sense of community between the two schools. The mission has not changed much in seven years; it still focuses on the ninth-graders mentoring children from grades K-6, but now the program also ‘shows’ the elementary students what it is like to be a Highlander. The program gives them something that they can look forward to. Even with the minor changes to the original mission, major success still occurs.

“The biggest success is the relationships that are built between the kids. It’s so fun when we walk down the first time,” Boyles said. “The ninth-graders are excited; they don’t realize how exciting it is until the first time they get to meet with the kids. Then walking back there’s even more chatter going on about ‘this is what I had in common with my Tough buddy’.”

Neither Houser nor Creswell still work at these schools anymore, but when each of them eventually left, they passed on their roles to their successors. When Houser left, Assistant Principal Paige Jeanes took over at the Ninth Grade Campus until she moved to TWHS Main Campus, leaving the position to Assistant Principal Boyles to keep it up and running for the last year.

“Staff APs move on, counselors move on, [and] the program [still] hasn’t dissolved, that’s how strong it is. That’s how important it is, both to Tough Elementary and to the Ninth Grade Campus, even when the main characters or the main people running the program leave, it is still held together. By either Tough or by our campus” Boyles added. 

Roughly 25 Highlander freshmen are chosen each year. Those 25 or so students are nominated by their teachers, who received an email with a Google form from Assistant Principal Boyles, 3-4 weeks after school started. That way, the teachers have had a chance to get to know their students to see if they will be a good fit as a mentor.

“So, out of all the kids, I make sure they have good character, good discipline, just overall well-rounded Highlander students,” Boyles said.

Unlike for the ninth-graders, where an AP is in charge of getting them together, at Coulson Tough, a counselor, Jessica Waters, is in charge of gathering the elementary students and planning the events. The events are communicated from Counselor Waters to Assistant Principal Boyles slightly ahead of time. There is one event that Boyles knows long beforehand, and it is different from all the other preplanned activities.

“At the end of the year, in May, we do a flip-flop- and instead of going to them- they come to us, so they get to eat a pizza lunch with us,” Boyles said.

This lasting memory of the school-year will be one that hopefully carries as all the students’ progress on to the next grade, or next building in another chapter of their educational careers.