ANDERSON­ — Maria Hernandez-Finch’s childhood gives her empathy for students in Anderson Community Schools who might not speak English as well as their peers.

“My parents were both immigrants from Cuba, and when I started school, I had kind of learned English from TV,” said Hernandez-Finch, 42, an ACS psychologist.

She said that as a child growing up in Florida, her mother spoke no English and her father spoke just a little.

“It was very hard when I went to school. I felt self-conscious obviously, and felt at times I didn’t fit in. That is inspiration for me ... remembering how I felt.”

She developed the Latina Mentors program in which Anderson High School students interact with younger Latino students at Anderson Elementary. The program is designed to help students sharpen their language skills, form connections, build self-esteem and more clearly see the value of education by looking at older role models.

“I was lucky,” she said, noting that she had teachers and educators who had high expectations for her.

She said language is just one educational obstacle that children of immigrants face. Students from other cultures sometimes have difficulty relating to examples that teachers give if those examples don’t relate to them, Hernandez-Finch said.

“Sometimes, depending on the knowledge of the educator on cultural diversity and such, people might not have had the highest expectations,” she said.

Along with her involvement with Latina Mentors, Hernandez-Finch volunteers time before and after school to committees on parent involvement, response to intervention and positive behavior instructional support. She also meets with parents, particularly those with special needs.

Rosetta Cummings, director of special education for Anderson Community Schools, applauded Hernandez-Finch’s initiative.

“She identified the problem and came with a proposal to help solve the problem, and she initiated it,” Cummings said. She said Hernandez-Finch deserves credit for “seeing a problem and without any push from anybody, putting something in place to really help kids.”

The novel program helps younger students while also giving the high school mentors an opportunity to be accessible role models, Cummings said.

“One of the advantages about it is you see basically another student, another child making it through the program being very successful,” Cummings said.

For Hernandez-Finch, “Latina Mentors is just one way for me to repay what I was given as a student,” she said.