Loriann Mark
Staff Writer
Twice a week, a dozen or so Pepperdine students volunteer to become the “wheels” for School on Wheels. They travel to a downtown Los Angeles homeless shelter and tutor children ages five to 17. For some of the children, this amounts to after school enrichment, as most of them already go to school during the day. Many of the children are enthusiastic to learn because they get rewards of five minutes of computer time if they concentrate on their studies.
And computer time equals music videos. Cool.
However, the bigger incentive for the children is the consistency they get, week after week. According to Joanne Kusulas, operations coordinator for School on Wheels, “These kids don’t have a consistent thing in their life. Just meeting with someone every week gives them an understanding that their everyday interactions are not the only things that exist.”
School on Wheels is a non-profit organization that tutors children, one-on-one, who live in homeless shelters such as “Upward Bound” and “Venice Bible Tabernacle” in Santa Monica, as well as shelters in Santa Barbara and Ventura. Students are also tutored in parks and public libraries, because some of them actually live in cars with a parent.
Agnes Stevens, a retired schoolteacher, and former Catholic nun, started this type of tutoring service in 1993 to help homeless children she found playing in the Santa Monica parks during the weekday. She started teaching them in the park, and encouraged them to enroll in and stay in school. Today, more than 300 volunteer tutors donate about 30,000 hours each year. Additionally, School on Wheels distributes more than 5,000 backpacks filled with school supplies annually.
One of the issues with tutoring in a homeless shelter or park is that it gets noisy and chaotic. Volunteer Laine Altman, who passed away in 2004, assembled a group of architects and design professionals who volunteered their time and talents to create “Learning Rooms” filled with furniture, computers, educational software, books and supplies in some of the shelters. Her motto was, “A child, a room, a chance.” There are nine learning areas in various shelters, and two more underway.
One of the several advisors and consultants to School on Wheels is Pepperdine professor Betty Glass. “The uniqueness of School on Wheels is that it does not make an effort to feed or house the homeless,” Glass said, “but zeroes in on the children of the homeless, seeking to help them with academics and encourage better self-esteem by keeping them current with their studies as they attend public schools.”
One other special characteristic of the program, according to Glass, is that, “Tutors stay in touch with their students as the young people are forced to move from one shelter to another or to a car or other shelter. As they move about from school to school the tutor stays in touch by a ‘hot line.’ The School on Wheels tutor is actually a life line for the homeless student, who has done nothing to deserve or produce their condition.”
Yet, sometimes tutors are required to be emotionally adaptable because they may not see the child they have been tutoring again because the child is forced to follow their family when they move. Homeless children tend to be resilient, but their priority is survival, not school.
To be an official volunteer tutor for School on Wheels, students must be at least 18 years old, complete a fingerprint and background check, and have received a high school diploma. There is12-15 hours of training on two consecutive Saturdays. If you are interested in tutoring a homeless child, call (800) 923-1100 or check out their website, http://www.schoolonwheels.org.
The University Church of Christ, which meets each Sunday in Stauffer Chapel and Elkins auditorium, helps with donations to fill the donated book bags. Donations can be made by contacting bglass@pepperdine.edu or calling Betty Glass at 310-506-4303.
12-06-2006