The youngest students gathered around their teacher for story time, building vocabulary and listening skills. In another classroom, beginning readers worked through structured phonics lessons, sounding out words and celebrating their successes.
Down the hall, older students pulled random topics from a hat and were asked to defend their positions before their classmates — an exercise designed to teach them to organize their thoughts, think critically, communicate clearly and explain the reasoning behind their opinions.
Those scenes reflect the mission of Prime Fit Youth Foundation, a Wichita-based organization that combines mentoring, academic support, social-emotional learning and youth development to help young people succeed both inside and outside the classroom.
The students were participating in Prime Fit’s recently completed four-week summer program, which served approximately 140 youth from across Wichita. The PALS and Empower camps were held at Holy Savior Catholic Academy, which partnered with Prime Fit to provide space for the program.
For younger students, there was a heavy emphasis on early literacy and the science of reading. For older students, activities increasingly focused on executive functioning, emotional regulation, conflict resolution, communication and leadership.
The summer program is one extension of a much larger effort.
Since 2019, Prime Fit has expanded from primarily serving Wichita Public Schools to working in multiple districts, including Wichita, Derby, Haysville, Maize and Hesston, as well as schools within the Catholic Diocese.
During the 2025-26 school year, Prime Fit served approximately 400 students across 38 sites. Leaders anticipate serving a similar number during the upcoming school year.
More Than Mentoring
At the center of Prime Fit’s approach is co-founder Kim Moody, a Wichita State University literacy professor with more than three decades in education.
Moody helps guide Prime Fit’s curriculum development, mentor training, program evaluation and strategic planning. She also serves on the Kansas Blueprint for Literacy State Advisory Council, part of a statewide effort to improve literacy instruction and outcomes for Kansas students.
That educational background influences how Prime Fit approaches its work.
“We’re evidence-based,” Moody said. “The impact report is based on quantitative data. We can actually measure the difference the program is making.”
Prime Fit focuses on six core outcomes: attendance, behavior, academic achievement, self-efficacy, sense of connection and self-regulation.
While final analysis for the 2025-26 school year is still underway, preliminary data indicates that between 88% and 94% of participating students met or exceeded Prime Fit’s six core outcome measures.
The organization’s approach also differs from mentoring programs built around occasional meetings between adults and students.
“We target specific skills and we do it daily,” Moody said. “A lot of mentoring programs are lunch buddies or meet once a month. Our team is there every single day.”
Each mentor is assigned to specific schools and works directly with students through daily check-ins, relationship building, goal setting and skill development.
Academic support is another part of the model.
At participating schools, Prime Fit staff can work alongside classroom teachers, providing individual assistance to students during reading, math and other instructional periods.
“We’re just a layer of support,” Moody said. “We don’t replace the teacher or any of the intervention time.”
Schools identify students who could benefit from Prime Fit, obtain parental permission and work with the organization to determine where mentors and academic support are most needed.
Support That Follows the Child
Behind the academic measures are young people who may be dealing with challenges that aren’t immediately visible.
Some face family instability, trauma, behavioral challenges or struggles in school. Others need help learning to manage emotions, resolve conflicts, organize themselves or simply believe they can succeed.
Prime Fit’s model is designed to respond to those different needs as children grow.
The summer program offered a glimpse of that progression.
For the youngest students, instruction concentrated heavily on early literacy skills. In the upper grades, the emphasis shifted toward emotional regulation, executive function, conflict resolution and critical thinking.
The debate exercise was one example. Students weren’t simply asked what they thought. They had to organize an argument, explain why they believed it and communicate that position to others.
Relationships, however, remain at the center of the work.
Dexter McGee, Prime Fit’s lead mentor and project coordinator, was the organization’s first mentor and has helped shape the culture that defines Prime Fit today. Recently recognized with a Wichita Business Journal Unsung Hero Award, he continues to mentor students while helping support newer members of the team.
McGee said mentors regularly attend sporting events, school performances, graduations and other activities — often on their own time.
“We’re not paid for that,” McGee said. “But if a student is involved in something important, we want them to know somebody is in the crowd cheering for them.”
For McGee, evidence of those relationships sometimes appears years later.
“I’ll be in the grocery store and kids will run up to me. I’ll be coming out of a movie and hear students calling my name that I haven’t worked with in three or four years,” he said. “Once those connections and relationships are built, that impact is still there.”
Sometimes those relationships come full circle.
One of Prime Fit’s recent summer interns was once a mentee in the program. During a training exercise, participants were asked to identify a “moment that mattered” in their lives. The young man talked about the mentors who invested in him and the role they played in his development.
Today, he is succeeding academically, developing leadership skills and helping support younger students.
Prime Fit also works to maintain that support as students move from elementary to middle and high school.
“It may not be the same mentor,” Moody said, “but there is often another Prime Fit mentor already there waiting for them.”
Preparing for Another School Year
With the four-week summer program now completed, Prime Fit is turning its attention back to its school-year programming and preparing mentors to return to schools across south-central Kansas.
The organization’s growth has been fueled by partnerships with school districts, educators, churches, community organizations and businesses, but Moody said the demand continues to exceed available resources.
Grant funding is particularly important. Moody said Prime Fit continually seeks grants and donations to keep programs available to families and to hire enough mentors to meet the need.
“There are times we have to turn students away,” Moody said. “Not because they don’t need support, but because we don’t have enough funding to hire another mentor.”
When asked what she hopes Prime Fit looks like five years from now, Moody’s answer was simple.
“I would like every child who needs a Prime Fit mentor to have one.”
For Prime Fit, that means more than placing an adult in a child’s life.
It means helping a beginning reader sound out a word, teaching an older student to organize and defend an idea, providing extra support when school becomes difficult and making sure someone is in the crowd when that young person looks up.
It’s an approach built around the idea that what a child needs academically, socially and emotionally are not separate things — and that consistently showing up for all of them can change the trajectory of a life.
