MONTE VISTA – Monte Vista resident and AmeriCorps member Wesley Nance is feeling successful as a member of the PALS Children Program for La Puente. 

Nance has been an AmeriCorps member for a couple of years, and he said he feels positive about the help he is giving children in the program and about helping it branch out to children who were also prior members. 

“PALS has changed my life without a doubt. I remember when I first came to PALS, I was definitely a different person back then. There’s just some magic that you see happening with these kids. We work with age groups primarily from kindergarten through fifth grade. We want to see these children getting the help that they need and succeeding,” he said. 

PALS is a children’s program through La Puente that according to the website stands for Positive Activities Lead to Success. The program is referral based and is fully licensed. The program is both an after school and summer program, designed to assist children who have high social emotional needs. The main objective of PALS is to look at the individual needs of each child and help provide social, emotional, and behavioral growth tailored specifically to each child.  

Nance spoke about working with children and what he does on a weekly basis, “It is some good work, but it can definitely be a lot. Every day is a different day. I help kids with their emotions. I help them regulate. We try to help them know what they are feeling. If they are feeling a certain way, we try to provide them with tools that they can use to help them calm down, or figure things out in a different way. A lot of them have what I call mild adaptive behaviors, like screaming, yelling, and running and that’s what they have learned to survive in their environments. We want to teach them that they can take a different route.  We want to help kids build strengths and skills. The main thing is skills. We want to help kids build these skills and strengths so that they have them when they get older.”  

Nance stated that they have a program called, “Starting Strengths,” that’s an 8-pie wheel. He stated that on the wheel there is physical health, mental health, and all different types of skills that help children build strengths. “Every day of the week we have something called circle time, where for ten minutes we talk about upcoming field trips, or behaviors and stuff like that. We bring up the pie wheel and we ask who can remember the pie wheel, and they all raise their hands, and we will ask them to explain things. We want to get them to use critical thinking, we want them to think about what they are learning, instead of just memorizing definitions and stuff like that.”  

Nance stated that he can remember when he first started with AmeriCorps and how he relates his experience of working with a therapist to how he is helping the children in the PALS program today. He stated that he feels the experience helped him relate and work better with and in understanding the children and their needs. He spoke about college and how he became an AmeriCorps member too, “I went to college, and I changed my major a couple of times, I couldn’t really find a path. I dropped out and then just worked. I was in Seattle, and I met a really cool therapist who taught me about trauma and how it affects the body and the brain and how it affects hormones and different things in your body. He put me through like a yearlong training with all of it. About a year later I was back in Alabama with my family, and I was looking for something different. I got an email from La Puente and thought OK I would sign up. I had an interview and another interview and suddenly I was there. I learned a lot in Seattle about trauma therapy. I think it gave me some help in my work with PALS. When kids have trauma, they can act in particular ways. I am grateful that I went through that therapy, it taught me a lot. I think it put me in a position to do well these kids.”  

According to Nance, PALS is currently trying to branch out to students who have already been in the program too, by continuing their help with their life skills, and having them return to the program as mentors. Nance said they believe this will also help children sustain their strengths and positive skills by returning and helping other children struggling.  

According to Nance, the PALS program is also working on constructing a $5 million building that would give them more space to house more children and staff.  Nance said people can help the PALS program by donating their time or by giving a monetary donation to the program to help with their efforts. “We all really appreciate the help too.”  

For more information on this program, or to donate, visit lapuente.org.