NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Retirees Go Back to School as Volunteers

The most popular person in the sixth grade at Colfax Avenue School can barely fit into the chair behind her desk.

She’s Judie Segal, the 50-year-old classroom “grandmother” assigned there by the East Valley Multipurpose Center as part of a program that matches retirees with schoolchildren.

Segal and 13 other volunteers make regular visits to Colfax in North Hollywood to tutor students, teach subjects and provide friendship and advice to students in need of individual attention.

The program got its start three years ago when Lori Litel paired up with Colfax teacher Marcia Weiss. The senior center and the school are just across the street from each other, and Litel said a program involving both seemed meant to be.

“We decided there should be a way of getting them together. . . . We wanted to do something linking the generations,” said Litel.

Three years later, the multipurpose center’s program has become well-entrenched at Colfax, and an expansion of the program to a local homeless shelter is in the works.

The volunteer grandparents have taught music, art and reading and tutored and counseled children individually. Their efforts have won high marks from Colfax officials, and from the grandparents themselves.

“I don’t know who benefits more by it, me or the kids,” said Bill Nealy, 74, of Studio City, who assists a Colfax teacher by tutoring children in reading.

Nealy, whose wife died three years ago, said the program helps him keep busy.

Working with elementary students is not always easy but is highly rewarding, said Segal, who spends a few hours several times a week taking part in class activities and talking to children on their recess breaks.

“I’ve experienced every emotion, from great inspiration to the depths of depression,” said Segal.

Litel said seniors who volunteer for the program are carefully screened, then placed according to their talents. The program taps the skills of an underused labor force--seniors--and helps ease the strain on teachers in an overburdened school system, she said.

In January, Litel plans to place some seniors in a classroom for children at the Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter for families. That program could lead to seniors providing volunteer day care and parenting advice at the center, she said.

“There is so much that each generation has that’s of value to the other,” Litel said.