To Kindergartners, She’s in a Class by Herself
When Dorothy clicked her ruby slippers, said there’s no place like home and left Oz for Kansas, she chose understatement over glitz. Some people, such as Pauline Sierra, understand the value of home without going to Oz.
Sierra lives in the same house, in the same Palms neighborhood, with the same husband for 43 years, and she couldn’t imagine another alternative even when pressed. With her five children grown and married, she has time to volunteer in the same school they attended. Now it’s her grandchildren who attend Walgrove School.
“I didn’t have the time when my kids were little, but now I help out in the kindergarten every day,” she said.
There are 32 children in Gladys Dunn’s kindergarten class, and Pauline Sierra’s presence is not only welcome but a necessity in these times of budget cuts and hiring freezes. Walgrove School has had a senior volunteer program for 15 years.
According to Dunn, older people provide a sense of family. “What we are lacking is family structure, and having older people in the classroom allows children to see some continuity and togetherness,” she said. There was a time when parents could come in and actually teach units like farm animals or art.
Pauline Sierra’s specialty is crafts. She decorates baskets and makes clothes for antique dolls and makes headbands and little girl bows out of lace and ribbons. A friend sells them for her at a local flea market. And whenever there’s a holiday, she is busy making things with the kindergartners of Walgrove School.
Pauline Sierra’s day begins at 4 a.m. “My husband, Jesus, is a sheet-metal mechanic at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo. So I get up and get him ready for work. I make his coffee and lunch every day. Then I have coffee, watch the news and do my chores. My house is clean by 7 a.m.,” she said. By 7:45, she is surrounded by 5-year-olds.
Sierra plans to stay on even after her last grandchild enters first grade. “I would miss (the children),” she said.
Sierra, who is from Arizona, had to quit school after the ninth grade to go to work to help her parents. “I never felt cheated because I had no choice,” she said. She met her husband when she was working at a hot-dog stand in Los Angeles, and they married in their teens. “We never argued. I know friends who say my marriage isn’t normal because we don’t fight,” she said. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
When Sierra isn’t volunteering or making crafts, she does crossword puzzles and keeps up to date with her family, which has grown to 15 grandchildren with one on the way. The walls in her studio and bedroom are galleries of smiling children, each of whom brings out the love in this woman who understands the beauty of simplicity.
For information about volunteering at Walgrove School, call (310) 391-7104 or (213) 625-6900.
