All adults, no matter their status or station, have one thing in common.

All were once sixth-graders.

That is the concept of a school mentoring program begun in Enid some 24 years ago by local businessman Stan Brownlee.

Brownlee was part of a program called adopt-a-teacher when he approached the principal of Adams Elementary School about doing a program one hour a week in his school.

“I thought he would ask me to read to kids,” Brownlee said.

Instead, the principal told Brown-lee about his school’s sixth-grade students who “come to school and don’t cause any problems, but we don’t have anything special for them.”

“He said, ‘Do something for them.’”

So Brownlee began taking guests with him each week to the school, “and we talked about where those people were in the sixth grade and the choices they made. It’s always been about choices.”

He has been doing it ever since, going from Adams to Harrison and, for the past decade, at McKinley elementary schools. These days, Brownlee spends about 45 minutes a week with McKinley sixth-graders, and the program he began has blossomed until there now are similar mentoring programs in several local elementary schools.

One, at Garfield Elementary, features a familiar name. Aaron Brown-lee, Stan’s son, has been mentoring sixth-graders for four years.

Guests share stories of their own sixth-grade years, in an effort to show today’s students the decisions they make today can impact them years down the road.

“They get to see who you were when you were their age,” said Stan Brownlee, a personal financial adviser. “Over a period of a year, everybody connects with one of those kids. They don’t always remember everybody, but they all remember somebody.”

“We try to bring a variety of guests,” said Aaron Brownlee, chief operating officer for Wymer Brownlee and Associates. “So it could be a business person or someone with just an amazing background or great story to talk about. It doesn’t always have to be someone who is high profile. We just try to concentrate on where those guests were in the sixth grade.”

“I think it is invaluable to the students,” said Ginger Ingels, sixth-grade teacher at Garfield. “He brings community leaders from all walks of life. They come from varying backgrounds, some of them not so pretty, just like these students. It is such an experience for them to be able to hear that someone just like them who maybe didn’t start out with the best upbringing can go anywhere they want.”

The guests have included former NBA star Brent Price, Advance Food co-founder Paul Allen, Enid Public Schools Superintendent Shawn Hime, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry and first lady Kim Henry and many others.

“I have never taken anybody who didn’t enjoy it,” Stan Brownlee said.

Recently, Stan Brownlee took Chance Cravens, senior basketball player for the Enid High Plainsmen, to McKinley. Brownlee mentored Cravens when he was a sixth-grader.

“He said the perfect things, ‘You’ve got to do your homework, you’ve got to get along,’” Stan Brownlee said. “He said all the right things for a senior in high school.”

Hearing the guests’ stories, Aaron Brown-lee said, is educational for him as well as the students.

“What you find out is you really don’t know people until you find out what they were like in the sixth grade,” he said. “Everybody has a story. These kids are able to take those stories and kind of relate them to their own lives, and hopefully learning something.”

“The children get exposed to people they would never meet,” said Tamra Tucker, sixth-grade teacher at McKinley. “It encourages them to reach a little bit higher, to reach beyond where their thinking begins to what the possibility is for their future.”

The program centers around one theme:

“We talk about making good choices,” Stan Brownlee said. “If you do the right things then you get to be who you want to be.”

Each week, Stan Brownlee said, “two or three basic precepts” are addressed.

“The first is there is never a good reason to be unkind,” he said. “There’s lots of reasons, but never a good reason to be unkind to anybody. If you make good choices, you have more fun. One we’ve added more recently is it’s hard to get into a whole lot of trouble if you’ve got your mouth shut.”

Good manners are stressed, along with respect for one another.

“I try to teach them how to shake hands and introduce themselves,” Stan Brownlee said.

The first question asked every week is about homework.

“It’s remarkable how much better they do just because we talk about it,” Stan Brownlee said. “We’ve got a lot of good kids, but you’ve got some kids who nobody ever asks them if their homework’s done.”

Students who don’t have their homework done don’t participate, Aaron Brownlee said.

“They will sit across the hall while there’s a guest speaker, and they are supposed to be doing their homework,” Aaron said. Pizza parties also act as an added incentive for completing homework — no homework, no party.

“It makes a huge impact on our kids,” said Garfield sixth-grade teacher Donna Hughes. “He comes in and talks with our kids every week with community leaders about making decisions that will affect the next 10 years of your life.”

Each week a student in each class is selected by his or her teacher to receive a silver dollar.

“It’s become a lot more important than I ever realized it would be,” Stan Brownlee said.

And the importance, it seems, doesn’t fade.

“I’ve had a number of instances where kids have come back to me and they always say, ‘I’ve still got my silver dollar,’” Stan Brownlee said. “There are kids who don’t get a lot of recognition. It’s special to them because they get some recognition.”

Stan said he gets graduation announcements and wedding invitations from former sixth-graders he has mentored.

“I get three, four or five a year from kids who remember,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

Aaron hasn’t been in the program long enough to get that kind of feedback from students, but he said, “Hopefully we’re just making some impact on people. These kids, some of them just need somebody who’s consistent, that believes in them. That’s the hard part.”

The students respond well to him, Aaron said.

“They know I care, and they know I love them,” he said. “I try to tell them that on a routine basis. You can see a spark in several of the kids, and that’s fun to see.”

Sixth grade, both men said, is a crucial time in a child’s life.

“You take a kid, they’re 17 years old and they’ve made bad choices, I don’t know what you do with them,” Stan said. “But in the sixth grade they can just decide to change. I think it’s just an important time in their life.”

Both men praised the work done by the teachers they work with — Tucker and Brandie Turner at McKinley and Hughes and Ingels at Garfield — but another adult presence in the students’ lives is important.

“Having somebody else that’s willing to commit the time and be there consistently I think is a really important part of it,” Aaron Brownlee said.

“It would be hard to do without him,” Tucker said of Stan Brownlee.