The kids notice when Brittany Grover can’t come to school.
She’s a volunteer with Communities in Schools of Greater Tarrant County, working one-on-one with students at some of Fort Worth’s highest-need schools. Reading, spelling, missing homework, a game or a conversation — whatever the day calls for.
She tries hard not to miss because she knows how little in their lives stays the same.
“Even if I’m only there working with one child for 20 minutes, it’s better than nothing,” Grover said. “You don’t know how far that 20 minutes is going to go down the road.”
Now in her third year of volunteering with Communities in Schools, Grover has become one of the people the staff know they can count on to show up for whatever is needed.
Her work earned her a nomination for 52 Faces of Community, the Fort Worth Report’s weekly series highlighting unsung local heroes.
Grover shrugs off the label of unsung hero. But volunteer manager Ivy Beasley said it fits.
This summer, boxes of donated school supplies stretched across the training room at the nonprofit’s Westworth Village headquarters. Beasley was overwhelmed with the thought of having to count and track each supply individually.
Grover was ready to help, Beasley said. Together, they unloaded the supplies, took inventory and prepared them for students.
Grover was part of the team that set up the nonprofit’s three resource rooms when its new building opened in September 2025, Beasley said.
Grover also delivers food bags to area schools. Over Christmas and spring break, she pitched in as the nonprofit filled around 700 bags so students could take food home when school meals couldn’t fill the gap.
“ She is always a person I can text and be like, ‘Will you come help me today?’” Beasley said.
Grover has been doing this kind of work, in one form or another, for most of her adult life.
She volunteered at Taste Community Restaurant for about seven years and has put in time at Union Gospel Mission of Tarrant County and The Warm Place. She also worked for Girls Inc. of Tarrant County and was assigned to schools across Tarrant County to teach students about friendship and financial literacy — not far from what she does now, she said.
“She is always a person I can text and be like, ‘Will you come help me today?”
Ivy Beasley, volunteer manager at Communities in Schools of Greater Tarrant County
She studied psychology in college and moved to Texas hoping to do casework, arriving just as the 2008 recession hit. The career she planned never quite materialized. Instead she wound through a string of volunteer roles at nonprofits and jobs working with kids of every age, building a toolbox she now draws on at Communities in Schools.
“Volunteering is not even really a hobby,” she said. “It’s kind of just my work that I fit into my week.”
Grover sees her students once a week. The work can be small and slow, but adds up over a school year. Handwriting steadies. Spelling sharpens. Reading clicks.
The help isn’t always academic. Grover tries to be a steady presence for kids whose lives rarely hold still.
“Maybe even being some sort of bright light on their dark days,” she said.
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Sometimes the help is as simple as bringing clothes. Grover remembers picking out a new pair of jeans for a girl who had outgrown hers.
Grover doesn’t overthink why she keeps coming back.
“It’s just this type of work that really matters,” she said.
She returns for the kids who don’t let her go unnoticed. They guess her age — badly, she joked. They tell her they like her shirt. They ask when she’s coming back.
Miss Brittany, can you come every day?
She can’t.
But she shows up. Once a week. The same steady presence, an anchor of sorts, in young lives buffeted by change.
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
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