Eye-Opening Lessons : Needy Youths Get Help With Homework--and a Boost in Self-Esteem--From Volunteer Tutors

Steven Ketsdever has it pretty tough.

The freckle-faced 7-year-old is a middle child. His father’s gone; his mother’s on welfare. During the last few years, he has been shuttled from shelter to shelter, apartment to apartment. His family now lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a noisy complex in the west end of Anaheim--but they may soon be evicted. Steven, a shy boy who loves Batman and big trucks, has been held back in first grade.

He can’t read.

“A lot of people in the shelters--the adults--I kind of feel like it’s their fault, but the kids just get stuck,” said Lindsey Foster, 34, of Buena Park, who for the last year has spent at least an hour a week with Steven, working on his reading, his math and his self-esteem.

“He’s never seen anything,” Foster said as she took Steven to the local fire station recently to check out the ladders and hoses, try on the bright yellow helmet and heavy fireproof jacket, and learn the emergency number, 911. “I try to just broaden his horizons, let him see what’s out there. Let him see that he can be a normal person.”

Foster, a customer relations manager, is one of about 100 volunteers with the Bridge Learning Center, a loosely formed network that pairs Orange County residents and needy school-age children in half a dozen shelters.

Some volunteers, such as Foster, follow the children: She met Steven at a shelter, and has moved with him, meeting weekly for academic sessions or field trips. Others stick with the shelter, rotating children every month or two as their families move on.

The tutors start with spelling, math, maybe reading a story. But the program is less about lessons than it is about love.

“It’s not good enough just to educate kids. You’ve got to motivate them to stay in school and motivate them to become something,” said Bridge coordinator Howard Levin of Laguna Beach. “We deal mostly with self-esteem, letting them know they have someone who cares about them.”

The only qualification for the volunteers, Levin said, is commitment. Among the tutors are a high school student, professionals, blue-collar workers and senior citizens. They are screened but get no real training before starting one-on-one sessions at the shelter.

“The tutoring really is secondary--it gives us something to talk about, but most of all the tutors help them deal with the social skills,” Levin explained. “We really treat them as a friend, and the friend comes every week and it gives them something to look forward to.”

Steven, for example, showers and makes sure his hair is combed before tutor time. “He likes going with her,” said his mother, Janice Hicky, whose older son, Jesse, also has a Bridge tutor. “Every week he’ll always ask: ‘Is Lindsey coming?’ ”

Because homeless adults are occupied with the struggle to find jobs, food and a place for their families to live, the children often get lost, shelter workers said. Switching schools as they move from place to place means they fall behind their classmates, and shelter life offers few positive role models.

“In an environment like this when they’re under a lot of stress, it gives them an opportunity to look forward to something and get some special attention,” said Marie Rainwater, a case manager at Anaheim Interfaith Shelter. Their parents’ “priority may not be being real nurturing to their children,” she added. “Someone who’s in a stable living situation can focus more time on that.”

Many parents in shelters cannot help their children with homework because they do not speak English, or have aborted educations themselves, workers said. So children who need extra help actually get less.

Sharri Upton, 35, joined Bridge last fall, thinking, “I waste at least an hour a day so why not do something worthwhile?”

Upton, a secretary who is studying communications at Cal State Fullerton, has taught a first-grader to read, helped a 17-year-old deal with her new baby, built a solid trust with a shy teen-ager, reviewed the sounds animals make with a kindergartner and done scores of math problems with an 8-year-old.

Now she is working with Jennifer Oberholtzer, 8, a bright-eyed girl with a sandy-brown ponytail whose unemployed father has dragged her from friends’ houses to shelters and back for the last three years.

“I just like being with tutors, I need help with my reading and stuff,” Jennifer said after a Saturday afternoon session inside the shelter’s library, which is adorned with dinosaurs. “After we read and stuff, when we only have a few minutes until she’s going, we go and we play.”

Gary Oberholtzer, Jennifer’s father, said he appreciates having an hour off from round-the-clock parenting, and thinks Upton fills a needed gap in Jennifer’s life by giving her a female adult to talk to.

During tutor time, Gary Oberholtzer does laundry or takes a nap.

For the parents and the children, tutors offer a much-needed break.

Foster picks Steven up at his apartment, where dozens of children toss footballs and bounce basketballs outside in the early evening.

She drops off two plastic bags full of used clothing for Steven’s little sister, and soon they are sitting in the quiet oasis of her back yard less than a mile away, his book bag spread on a picnic table with the calm swimming pool behind.

First, Steven sketches the progress of his newly potted marigold on a pad and records the date--they keep the plant at Foster’s house so it won’t be disturbed in the hubbub of the Ketsdever apartment. Then Steven slowly forms the letters of his vocabulary words and sounds them out.

“That’s about the neatest you’ve ever done--you must be thinking hard. That’s real good,” Foster said after Steven finished writing his name on the wide lines of the pad.

“Can I do that one?” Steven asked, pointing to “food” on the chart and then, following Foster’s lead, sounding out f , oo and d .

In the year they have been together, Foster has become a key part of Steven’s life.

She speaks to his teacher on the telephone to get clues about where he most needs academic help. They share projects like the marigold plant, and special trips like the recent visit to the fire station. Foster has also taken the whole family to the beach, and twice to the movies.

On the way to the fire station, Steven revealed his dream of becoming a police officer. But he loves trucks and helmets. Later in the evening, he is not so sure.

“I think you should be a fireman instead of a policeman,” Buena Park firefighter Brad Jarrell suggested at the end of the visit.

“I think so, too,” Foster said. “Maybe you can change your mind.”

“Yeah, I changed my mind,” Steven squealed.