Volunteer Makes School Her Stage

If there is such a place as a home away from home, Jeanna Bassett has found it.

For the past 18 years the San Clemente woman has been volunteering and working part time at Concordia Elementary School, which she attended as a student the first day it opened in 1955.

She has recorded 16,000 hours of volunteer time and works 12 hours a week teaching art and computer skills.

“Spending all that time at the school hit me all of a sudden when I was shopping in a local supermarket and a person behind me asked if I was Mrs. Bassett,” she recalled. “She said she knew me when she was a student, but now I was teaching her son.”

Bassett, 44, said she had a flashback.

“Everything seemed to go before my eyes and I just wanted to get out of there,” she said.

But that only lasted a minute, and now Bassett says she wouldn’t mind working and volunteering at the school until her husband, Ronald, 49, retires.

He works for the San Diego Gas & Electric Co.

“I need to be around the kids,” said the mother of two grown sons, “and I need the kind of feeling they give me.”

She also considers the school her stage.

“I feel like I’m a performer and sometimes I sing and dance to make a point to the kids,” she said. “I feel like I’m on Cloud 9 when I get a kid to make a point. I want them to be surprised at what they can do.”

Her teaching ability comes without a college degree.

“I’d like to go to college, but I just don’t have the time,” said the lifelong San Clemente resident, who has received a number of awards over the years for her volunteer efforts.

The Parent-Teacher Assn. held a Jeanna Bassett Day--”That really embarrassed me”--and KNBC-TV recently selected her for its “Spirit of Education” program to recognize her contributions to education.

A self-taught artist, Bassett has painted murals of storybook characters on the walls of the school media center.

“I wanted to give the kids and the school a gift and that’s what I’m able to do best,” she said. “I also wanted the kids to know that reading is very important.”

And she said it was a chance to show off what she could do without a formal education. “I’ve been drawing since the fourth grade,” she said.

She learned computer skills from her son, Coby, 19, when he was 8 years old. “I started asking him why the machine did certain things and he would show me and soon I got good enough to teach it to others,” she said. “I’ve always liked machines.”

Bassett feels the students see her as something more than a volunteer and part-time teacher.

“When they see me in a market they can’t believe I’m shopping for groceries or driving a car,” she said. “They don’t think of me as a normal person. They think of me as something special, like a movie star, and I love it.”

As a matter of fact, she added, “They don’t even think of me as being a mom.”

The idea of drinkers depositing 50 cents in a breath analyzer, a sort of do-it-yourself sobriety test, to see just how tipsy they are is paying dividends in a couple of ways at the Champions Sports Bar at the Irvine Marriott.

Since the machine was installed earlier this year, an estimated $200 has been handed over to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says Lauren Geller, the bar manager.

Bartender Leigh Ann Dodero said that people are actually paying attention to the results shown on the machine, and that some even 86 themselves.

“It’s also fun for them to see just how crocked they really are,” she said.