PROFILE : Ojai Tutor Teaches Young About Living With a Disability : JoAnn Kara, who was paralyzed in a car crash, fields questions about math, reading and her motorized wheelchair.

When teaching assistant JoAnn Kara returns to the classroom at Ojai’s Topa Topa Elementary School next week, she anticipates as many questions about her motorized wheelchair as about math or reading, the subjects in which she specializes.

“The younger children in particular are fascinated by my chair,” Kara said. “The most popular questions are ‘How fast does it go?’ and ‘Can I drive it?’ ”

As a volunteer teacher and frequent guest speaker in Ventura County classrooms, Kara, 36, is accustomed to questions from children about her life and her disability.

“I find kids to be much less self-conscious and ill at ease around me than grown-ups (are),” she said. “They warm up right away, and they’re eager to help me out--to pick up something I’ve dropped or to hold a door open for me. And the older ones aren’t afraid to ask hard, personal questions, like ‘How does it feel?’ or ‘Don’t you wish you could play tennis, or dance?’ ”

And how does she deal with the questions? “Like everyone, I have good days and bad days,” Kara said. “I just answer how I feel at the moment, and what I think they can handle.”

Kara suffered a spinal-cord injury in 1977, leaving her a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down with partial use of her hands. She was a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver. The car spun out of control and crashed into a ditch. A student at Ventura Community College at the time, Kara was forced to give up her studies in environmental science.

“When I graduated (from) high school, I thought I might want to become a forest ranger here in the Los Padres (National Forest),” she said. “But after the accident, that didn’t seem like a very practical idea.”

After 1 1/2 years spent recovering, Kara enrolled in Santa Barbara Community College, graduating in 1985 with a degree in liberal arts and enough education credits to teach preschool. But the amount of physical help needed by preschoolers proved to be more than Kara could manage from a wheelchair.

Then, in 1987, second-grade teacher Mary Ann Scheele invited Kara to speak in her classroom at Topa Topa Elementary School. “Our new reading book referred to disabilities of different kinds and I wanted the students to meet someone who lives with disability,” Scheele said. “JoAnn was very matter-of-fact about it all, and explained how she gets around in her chair, how she uses the pull bar to get in and out of bed. She’s comfortable talking about herself in that way, and it was wonderful for them.”

When Scheele saw how well the children responded to Kara, she asked her to tutor students in a math and reading program, which led to an ongoing position as a teacher’s aide. Some years, when school budgets allowed, Kara was paid; these days, budget cuts mean that funds are not available. Still, Kara returns to the classroom each year as a volunteer.

“Her presence is invaluable,” Scheele said. “She’ll take one group and give them individual attention on reading comprehension, phonics or spelling games, which leaves me free to work with another group. Without her help I couldn’t do nearly as much with the students--especially the ones that need individual attention.”

Kara doesn’t confine her child-centered activities to the classroom. In addition to her work at Topa Topa, Kara home tutors, teaches Sunday religion classes at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and is co-leader of Girl Scout Troop No. 158. She and her scouts make frequent outings to the Ojai Valley Bike Trail to pick up trash for recycling.

“I’m a nature-loving person and I try to get outside as much as possible. You’ll see me over at the school field watching sports, or at Libbey Park playing with kids or watching them play tennis. And the bike path is a big help for me now,” Kara said of the asphalt-paved trail, one of the few that are wheelchair-friendly.

With Kara’s help, others with disabilities who love the outdoors will have more choices for treks in the future. As access coordinator for CREW (Concerned Resource and Environmental Workers), Kara is working with the U.S. Forest Service on the research and development of wheelchair-accessible trails in the Los Padres.

“We’re looking into paving some old fire roads and hoping to set up an interpretive trail with a fence and guide rope for the seeing impaired,” Kara said. “I hope we can do what they’ve done at Rancho del Rey (a retreat center with an accessible trail in Ojai), where they have these scent boxes, so that you can get the smell of the native plants.”

Kara lives in a converted garage in her parents’ Ojai house in the same neighborhood in which she grew up, on a street that dead-ends at the base of the Topa Topa Mountains. Because she lives around the corner from Topa Topa school, neighborhood children--some of whom call her “Aunt JoAnn”--often drop by to visit on their way home.

“They’ll ask me to help them with a math problem, or they’ll just want somebody to talk to. Sometimes they’ll come by just to say, ‘Hi! We were playing outside and we wondered if you wanted to play too.’ ”