One for the Books : Retired Lawyer Forms a Homework Club

His knowledge of Egyptian history may be weak, but he keeps the popcorn coming and only raises his voice to holler “Quiet” when it gets really noisy.

He is Saul Lessler, a 55-year-old tax and real estate lawyer, who retired from his Los Angeles law practice four years ago to do community service. He found his calling in a little room at the Camarillo Boys and Girls Club where, three times a week, 50 kids punch the clock at Lessler’s new endeavor: the Homework Club.

Equipped with only a box of new pencils and a jar of popcorn kernels, Lessler braces himself at 2:30 in the afternoon for the first onslaught of kids, ranging from first- to sixth-graders.

For more than three years now, he has recorded their names as they come in one after another, flopping down their backpacks and bags, sharpening pencils into fine points and taking out their crumpled homework assignments.

The scene is controlled pandemonium: students stretched out on the floor and tables, shouting out questions and chomping popcorn. One boy does his arithmetic by counting his fingers. A group of girls huddles at a table, discussing the day’s events and arguing over how to diagram a sentence.

Later, junior high and some high school students arrive with heftier bags and weightier questions.

At the Homework Club, Lessler’s rules are few: Don’t throw popcorn and don’t be embarrassed to ask questions.

And he gets the range of them.

“If you were an Indian, what would you have for breakfast?”

“How many times as far is it from Los Angeles to Denver as it is to New York from Washington, D.C.?”

“Is a human skull twice as thick as a chimpanzee’s?”

Even if Lessler knows the answers, he tries not to blurt them out. Making kids do their own work is the point, he says.

“This is what I wanted when I retired--to give kids a place where they can get their homework done,” Lessler says. “Kids can then get some quality time with parents in the evenings.”

It may not take a former tax lawyer to know that popcorn isn’t incentive enough to do homework. Lessler doles out a form of currency--Homework Bucks--a photocopy of a one dollar bill with his smiling face on it instead of George Washington’s.

Students get a Homework Buck every time they show up to the club. Every six weeks, Lessler auctions dolls, walkie-talkies, miniature racing cars, back packs and other toys to the highest bidders.

“A kid that hasn’t gone to the Homework Club for awhile will see the stuff kids get at the auction and say, ‘Hey, I want to start going to get some Homework Bucks,’ ” Lessler says.

The regulars say they come to the club for Homework Bucks but also to get Lessler’s help.

“What’s nine plus nine? I have a little trouble doing the higher numbers,” admits 6-year-old Lizzy Wigton. “I do my homework here everyday. My mom checks it in case he’s missed something.”

Sometimes the array of questions proves to be a humbling experience for Lessler.

“When a kid came in talking about the Samaritan people of Egypt, I realized I had gaps in my education,” Lessler says. “My history was never very good.”

Shirley Carpenter, superintendent of schools for the Pleasant Valley School District, says teachers and parents are delighted with the Homework Club. It is especially helpful for working single parents, she says.

“It relieves the parent from having to see that it all gets done,” Carpenter says. Lessler takes some burden off of the single parent, she says, who otherwise would be “the only person to hear the events of the day, to make the meals, and oversee homework.”

Now operating in its fourth year, the Homework Club last month won a program excellence award from the Boys and Girls Clubs’ Coastal Area Council.

The Bank of A. Levy recently decided to give Lessler’s program a $2,500 grant to help set up a computer for older students to do term papers and other projects.

Overall Lessler refuses to discipline kids or play truant officer.

Chris Munce, 10, asks Lessler if his brother, Jason, 8, had come in yet. “He’s in big trouble,” Chris says. “Mom said he had to come in here and do his homework.”

“Why don’t you do him a favor and go find him,” Lessler suggests.

“This is a club, it isn’t school,” Lessler says. “I don’t think it’s our place to make them do homework, or else kids will become resentful. You’re much better off trying to motivate kids than telling them, ‘This is what you have to do.’ ”