Their Addition is Teaching Subtraction

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Monday, October 7, 1996

Richard Jones

Jonathan O'Neill and Celestino Sanchez - a precocious pair of 10-year-olds, best friends and fifth graders at Ludlow Elementary School in North Philly - looked down at their math books after school one day last week and this is what they saw:

823

-357

Celestino sighed. Jonathan scrunched his eyebrows into a V. The two looked gravely at each other. "Addition," said Jonathan, "was easier."

But this was a subtraction. This was a job for Cynthia Spain.

She was there in an instant, seated across their lunchroom table, ready to explain the intricacies of borrowing this number and carrying that.

Spain, 32, and East Oak Lane homemaker and mother of two, is one of nearly 200 members of the National School and Community Corps - a division of AmeriCorps, often called "the domestic Peace Corps" - who have started working at Ludlow and about four dozen other city schools. They help with mentoring, tutoring, counseling, coaching and just about anything else. Even subtraction.

"The kids here need someone," Spain said. "Kids everywhere need someone. We just want to be here for them. We want to just help them however we can."

In city schools already taxed by climbing enrollments and dwindling resources, the NSCC members have been welcomed with open arms - and open math books. And that increased attention equals better-prepared students, said Sonia Rodriguez-Perez, principal of the 445-students school at Sixth and Master Streets. "More people means extra eyes, extra ears, extra hands, extra help," she said. "The teachers really appreciate what they're doing and you can just look at the kids and see what it means to them."

Funded by a $2.25 million grant from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the NSCC is a nationwide service project that started in Philadelphia three years ago. There is only one other branch, at a school in New York City. Schools such as Ludlow also pitch in using about $40,000 of their own money to help fund the program. About half the participants are from Philadelphia; the rest are from around the country. All are asked to sever one year, for which they get an $8,000 stipend and a $5,000 voucher that can be applied to student loans or tuition.

And it is not just college students who are serving. The group at Ludlow includes a retired nurse's aide from Haiti who loves children, a computer whiz from North Philly who attends technical school, and a recent Temple University grad from the Northeast who is on aspiring teacher. All of them are at Celestino and Jonathan's disposal. And to listen to the volunteers, the pupils are not the only one who gain.

"It's not just a program we're doing," said Penny Skversky, a freckle-faced, fast-talking 24-year-old who is the NSCC team leader at Ludlow. "We're getting something back."

Skversky graduated from Temple two years ago with a bachelor's degree in education. "I was going to teach, but I thought I'd give national service a try," she said.

Like most NSCC members, Skversky was motivated by a deep, altruistic desire for public service. And like most, she realized that a $5,000 tuition wasn't too shabby either. But you couldn't put a price tag on the experience she's getting with the corps, Skversky said. "This has given me so much more of an overall look at schools - how they work, what the kids need- more than if I'd become a teachers straight out of school," said Skversky, a 1989 graduate of Northeast High. "The kids are great. They take to you so quickly. They get attached to you like Velcro."

Skversky said she got polite nods from her friends when she told them about her job. "Everyone thinks I'm already a teacher," she said. "They just don't understand the concept of national service. They say: 'Oh, that's nice.'"

The computer whiz, John Smythe, 22, got the same treatment when he told folks he was going to be working in the NSCC. They either hadn't heard of it or didn't understand why he would take part. "It's a change of pace and a chance to further my education," said Smythe, who is tall, rangy and bespectacled, and can spend hours talking about computers - anything from microprocessors to desktop publishing. But no science he knows could have prepared him for working with youngsters.

"I'm amazed by their honesty, their openness, once you build their trust," he said. "The children are something."

For evidence of that, just check out the Ludlow After School program. It's run out of the Youth Community Center across the street from the school. There, lunchroom tables have been set up for the pupils, who race over, throw off their Hunchback of Notre Dame book bags, plop down and crack the books. The building - not much bigger than an average rowhouse - swirls with activities. There's Marie Guerrier, 38 - a former nurse's aide from Haiti - helping a young girl with penmanship exercises. There's Skversky, helping someone with proper nouns. There's Smythe, helping a little boy with some fill-in-the-blank exercises. And then there are Celestino and Jonathan. They sit side by side. Their eyes dart from the problem in their math book to each other, back and forth several times, before finally settling on Spain, the tutor. No words are needed. Spain is on the case, reminding the boys about carrying those numbers. She walks away to let them handle the problem and, within moments - after another review of the whole carrying-number thing - they find the answer. (For the record, Celestino and Jonathan want everybody to know that 823 minus 357 equals 466.)

"I like homework," says a beaming Jonathan. "It makes me smarter." Celestino nods enthusiastically and says he likes this after-school program and the new helpers. "They're nice," he says. And they make him want to learn, want to do homework.

Youngsters excited about homework, learning, staying after school? Blame the NSCC folks.

"They're wonderful. I'm so thankful for them," said Grace Julius, who has been running Ludlow's after-school program for two years. "The children are great with them, and they are great with the children. Last year, we had so many children, but we were really short-staffed. This year, with them, the kids are getting so much more attention."

Attention or no, this loving-homework stuff still confuses parents such as Nancy Molina, the mother of three children in the after-school program: Maria, 8, Nancy, 6, and Tiffany, 4. "The other day, Maria came home from school and said, 'Mommy, Mommy, the lady with the long hair and the freckles' - that would be Penny, by the way - 'helped me a lot with my homework.' And the next day she couldn't wait to come. "She wasn't like this last year," Molina said. "This year, she loves coming. "I don't know what it is," Molina said, shaking her head. Don't know what it is, huh? Well, just ask Jonathan and Celestino.