The Rewards of Volunteering to Work With Children

by James Freedman

Spending time with children is an extremely fulfilling experience, even if they're not your own. Not everyone can be a teacher. However, volunteering for an hour or two a week is something most people can do to enrich their own lives as they enrich the lives of the children they help.

There are a wide variety of options available to you. If you call up most nearby public schools and say you want to volunteer, they'll happily put you in touch with the right official. You can also check out the School Volunteer Program for the Los Angeles Unified School District (www.lausd.k12.ca.us). If you volunteer for the Program, you can assist overworked teachers in the classroom. My personal experience in this regard has shown me teachers who can't possibly give each pupil the attention he or she deserves. You can help make up for this deficit, even if it's just for one or two students a week.

I've spent countless hours in elementary school classrooms, playgrounds, cafeterias and gyms helping kids with their homework, teaching them math tricks, the meanings of words and the proper composition of a sentence. Each session of two or three hours is full of vivid moments that are impossible to forget. For example, the look on a young girl's face when she receives a gift of books; the exclamations of joy and wonderment by a group of kids after you teach them multiplication; a young boy finally distinguishing between his b's and d's. But perhaps the most memorable of all were the moments spent outside of books and homework assignments, playing basketball or hopscotch with the kids and some of the other volunteers on the playground.

Trust me, those few hours a week can make all the difference in a child's life and your own.