The principal at one North Texas high school found a way to help students in need while teaching them life skills and now a community is seeing a positive change. He's this week's KRLD Difference Maker.
Many of the students at Linda Tutt High School in Sanger come from difficult circumstances.
“Our school district has a Friday backpack grogram where students take food home on Fridays in bag and then take it on a bus and many of our students have expressed how they are kind of embarrassed about and we’ve even had students deny the food because of that,” said second-year principal Anthony Love.
That's how second year principal Anthony says the grocery store inside Linda Tutt high was created.
“We’re working with Texas Health Resources and First Refuge Ministries here in Sanger,” Anthony said. “So we’re coming together and have made a grocery store inside our high school that is completely run by students.”
The program is run on a point system. Students get a certain number of points based on the size of their family and are also given opportunities to earn more points by doing good deeds, working at the store and even mentoring other students.
“Our hope is that…we’re trying to build up their self-esteem their pride and dignity that they’ve done something and it’s not just a free handout that they need to be embarrassed about,” Anthony said.
Anthony says he's already seen a positive change in his students.
“We’ve seen improvements behaviorally and even academically,” Anthony said.
Anthony said helping people is one of the reasons he got into education.
We're proud to call Anthony Love and Linda Tutt High school this week's KRLD Difference Makers.
If you know someone making a difference in the community, send us an email at differencemaker@krld.com.