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Volunteer Stories
2010 Volunteer of the Year
Glenn Romano
Paul Revere Elementary School
Three years ago Glenn decided he wanted to connect with his local community more. He has always wanted to read to kids and has a flare for drama—so reading out loud to Natalie Krause’s 3rd grade class at Paul Revere Elementary School was a perfect fit.
“Glenn has brought wonder and excitement into my student’s lives and helped to form a positive attitude about reading! Without his help, I would not have been able to complete as many novels with my students and done as many activities surrounding those novels,” said Natalie.
“The impact of his volunteering is shown in students’ sparked interest to read in their free time and show of excitement about new books. Thanks to his modeling of fluent and expressive reading, many of my students can now read with fluency and expression.”
Glenn didn’t stop there. As Glenn became more a part of the school community he started answering calls for help in other parts of the schools like spending two days helping the librarian distribute Reading is Fundamental books to each student. PTA president Lorraine Orlandi watched Glenn help distribute the books and was impressed at how he really tried to connect with each student, help them find books they like. “I am really impressed by his energy and how he relates to the students.”
Glenn has started taking his great enthusiasm for Paul Revere to the streets and recruited neighbors at the Bernal Heights Fiesta on a Hill to learn more about Revere. After a day of Glenn shaking hands and drawing people over to Revere’s table several families were interested in enrolling their kids at Revere and attended school tours, Glenn also got four new neighbors to sign up as a volunteers.
Glenn’s incredible energy and dedication to the Revere community helps accomplish all sorts of things it even helps students through long testing days. “One day we had a lot of testing in the morning so my students were complaining, but then they read in our schedule that Mr. R was coming in the afternoon and said, ‘It’s ok, Mr. R is coming! We’ll have fun later!’”
Barbara Styles
George Peabody Elementary School
Volunteers help teachers have time to address their goals
Barbara Styles has volunteered at George Peabody Elementary for more than 20 years. According to librarian Susan Blair her main goals as a librarian are to, first, see every class and help students get books, then support teachers with their curriculum by pulling bibliographies of books that support the teacher’s lessons, and finally clean up the library, weed books, bring on new books. All of this is to be accomplished in just two days a week.
So in addition to helping students, Barbara helped automate the library. She helped enter the library’s 4,000 books into a computer system, she cleaned and recovered books, and applied spine labels that needed to be affixed to every book.
“If I had to catalogue the library myself I would have to do it between classes and afterschool—it would have taken me at least a year. Now I can focus on more important projects because I am not affixing spine labels,” said Susan.
“It is only with Barbara’s help that I can do the job that I just finished my Masters to do, otherwise I would only have just enough time to check books in and out. Student learning is directly affected by her untiring help in the library.”
Helen Chen Abrams
Ida B. Wells High School
Volunteers help re-engage struggling students
Ida B. Wells is a continuation high school; students are significantly behind in credits or have been kicked out of another school often due to truancy. According to Special Education teacher Jessica Cohen, their students have a lot that they are up against. Truancy issues often stem from other issues like problems with family, neighborhood violence or homelessness.
“Our students have a hard time trusting adults but Helen has a way with students—she really connects with them,” said Jessica.
“I miss school a lot due to health problems so I often don’t know the material. Mr. Tsien can’t always go back and teach last week’s work because he has to teach the other students new things—but Ms. Abrams can help me,” said student d’Steffano.
Student Yaritahza echoed the sentiments and added, “Before I didn’t like math but now that Ms. Abrams helps me I get it more and like it now. I think it is really cool that she takes her own free time, doesn’t get paid and uses it to help students achieve what they want.”
Jenny Yao
John Muir Elementary School
Volunteers help create positive learning environments so students can focus on their studies
There are many things that can distract students from learning—daydreams, a chatty desk mate—but sometimes basic needs like hunger and clothes impede student learning.
Volunteers like Jenny at John Muir Elementary School help make sure students’ basic needs are met.
Jenny brought her sewing machine into school so when a child’s uniform needs mending they don’t have to go home, missing class, to change—she can fix it on the spot. Jenny also helps run a food pantry that sends a knapsack full of food home to Muir families every Friday.
According to teacher Lisa Fojo students and staff are all thankful to have Jenny, “She has shown our students as well as staff love, compassion and patience.”
Daniel Andrist
John Muir Elementary School
Volunteers help students find their inner artist
Daniel Andrist&mdashMr. Dan&mdashas he is affectionately called by John Muir Elementary students, provides hands-on classroom assistance, coaching students, showing them how to apply their math skills in their art projects like snowflake making, he stays after class to help install student artwork throughout the school and he has engaged his friends and neighbors to donate their time and materials for projects.
According to the art teacher Linda Camarena “Mr. Dan’s consistent support, belief in student ability to succeed has alleviated overcrowded art classes, expanded the art program and has been extremely transformative.”
“One of the amazing things that I will always treasure is the reaction from the boys making the Obama quilt we did as a project. Our fifth grade, very macho boys, had to hand sew. From kick ball to needle and thread Mr. Dan was able to get our boys in touch with their fine motor dexterity and feel good about it. I watched them become tailors as they masterfully handled their sewing tools and created a beautiful product. They were sooo proud.”
2010 Partner of the Year
Advent Software
Dr. Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy
For 12 years Advent has partnered with Dr. Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy. Advent employees visit Drew weekly—one group tutors literacy during lunch and a second group mentors.
“Many find it hard to believe that 3rd graders are willing to give up their lunch to read with a volunteer, but we witness it at Drew each week. The students not only are on their best behavior because they don’t want to miss out on their time with their Advent tutor but we have also noticed great improvement with their reading fluency,” said Principal Tamitrice Rice-Mitchell.
“Advent is not only committed to the tutoring and mentoring programs, they are committed to our school as a whole. They ask questions about our school mission statement, attend school events, and even correspond with teachers via email. Because they know that we are striving to provide our youngsters with more reading opportunities Advent sponsored a book drive and raised enough money to provide each student with two brand new, culturally relevant books to take home. We are so appreciative of Advent’s commitment to Drew,” said Principal Rice-Mitchell.
Arup
Philip Sala Burton High School
Volunteers help connect curriculum to the “real world”
Arup, is an international engineering firm that helped design the Academy of Science buildings, the new Federal Building and is currently working on the California high speed rail project. They send employees bi-weekly to Philip Sala Burton High School engineering pathway classes. Volunteers tutor math and science and help students with their engineering projects. They also send a different engineer to the school each month to do a 20 minute presentation on their current project in order to bring examples of real life engineering to the classroom.
According to Science/Engineering Instructor Holger Michaelis, “My students clearly looked forward to speaking with and working with real engineers. It brought my assignments to life and I really saw a difference in student motivation when the ARUP volunteers started to come into the classroom. Grades went up and project assignments were taken more seriously. I really hope we can continue this relationship in the future—it has been an awesome experience!”
Chronicle Books
Bret Harte Elementary School
Volunteers help students discover their love for reading
Chronicle Books employees volunteer at Bret Harte Elementary with reading intervention students. Some students need help with their comprehension; others are working on their fluency. Chronicle Books employees pair up one-on-one with students on Tuesdays; the students practice reading a book out loud to their volunteer. It is practice because then on Thursday those students read the book out loud again but this time they read to their Kindergarten buddy. The students really flourish with the one-on-one attention. Chronicle Books has also donated books so that students can take book home to practice.
Photo Credits
Photos of Advent Software, Barbara Styles, and Chronicle Books by Joey Chandler: www.jchandlerphotography.com
Photos of Daniel Andrist, Glenn Romano, Helen Chen Abrams, and Jenny Yao by Dwayne Marsh: www.dsamuelmarsh.com
