In a classroom in Southwest Baltimore, during a reading exercise about the life cycle of the grasshopper, first-grader Brayan Orozco Godinez got a bit lost, but he didn’t interrupt the teacher.

“Can you help me?” Brayan said, taking the hand of the retired oncology nurse gliding quietly among the desks. He pointed to the question, “Where does the grasshopper lay its eggs?” and whispered, “I don’t know what to do!”

Janet Joyner sat down beside six-year-old Brayan and had him read the exercise aloud with her, placing a little red paper ticket under each line as they read along. Soon he was scribbling away.

In a dozen other classrooms at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School, retirees like Joyner – among them a former economist and a woman who worked for decades in manufacturing – were helping students as part of Experience Corps, a program affiliated with the American Association of Retired Persons that places older adult volunteers in city schools.

Participants who commit to the three-days-a-week, 15 hour total schedule receive a small stipend but Joyner raves about rewards that have nothing to do with money.

“I really like it. The children appreciate it so much,” said Joyner, who after 40 years in nursing, including at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, found retirement strange. “I’m used to getting up at 5:30,” she said. “Now I get up in the morning and I look forward to being able to come here and help them.”

“She Knows What We Need”

This year, for the second budget year in a row, the city is proposing to significantly cut back on its contribution to Experience Corps’s funding, requiring them to compete with other organizations for a finite piece of the budgetary pie. (City-wide, the program places 290 volunteers – whose average age is 68 – in 25 schools, serving 6,200 children.)

“I just don’t understand why they would target us,” said Burnett Davis, 71, the Experience Corps team leader for Lakeland.

Davis made a plea at a recent Baltimore Taxpayers’ Night hearing, presenting statistics to show improvements in academic performance and attendance at Experience Corps schools. He might just as well have invited city officials to Lakeland to see the phenomenon firsthand.

“It helps so much having her here to provide so much one-on-one time. It’s hard in a class of 25 to connect with kids as much as I’d want,” said teacher Meghan Ramsey, speaking of Joyner, who had just helped her students through a couple of intense hours of math and reading work.

“The kids come to her and love her – she’s awesome,” Ramsey said. “She brings in supplies and pencils. Without being asked, she knows what we need.”

Often, what Joyner does is just get the students to focus.

“Sometimes they don’t hear a word the teacher says because they’re talking or fighting,” she said. “They’re also really competitive though and want to do well. Some of them are very smart and come to the class and listen.” Joyner encourages them all.

Challenges Outside the Building

The volunteers “play a role somewhat like a grandparent,” according to Lakeland’s principal Najib Jammal, whose school is located in an impoverished corner of the city. “They really support our mission,” he said, noting that many of the volunteers have been coming to Lakeland since the program started there three years ago.

Of the 741 students at the school, 96 percent qualify for free and reduced price meals. Assisting a student body that’s about a third Hispanic, Davis’ team has taken a couple of informal Spanish classes but only came away with some rudimentary skills.

Still their greatest contribution, several said, in addition to instructional help, is just providing a wholesome personal influence, something boys need particularly.

“They need to see a brother doing something positive rather than negative,” said retired economist Jerry McPherson. “I’m a god-fearing man and although I’m not going to push religion on the children I am going to carry myself in a way that sets an example for them. And if I can affect even one child that way, I find it really satisfying.”

It’s not always easy – once McPherson got knocked over by some girls fighting in the cafeteria and vowed “never again.” But talking to “Mr. Jerry” afterwards, the girls “had to feel bad about it and I think, learned from it,” he said.

“Those Jobs Are Gone”

Like McPherson, Rhonda Sweet, 65, says working with students is “so rewarding” and “helps me stay sharp too.” But as a longtime worker in manufacturing who has watched that kind of job nearly vanish from the region, she worries what even the best students will be able to do in the future.

“There’s not a lot of those jobs anymore – they’re gone,” said Sweet, who ran a machine at Proctor & Gamble in Hunt Valley for 18 years (“It made Cover Girl compacts!”) and worked at Western Electric for 17 years. “They’re going to have to have a college degree.”

Sweet says she finds it satisfying to help students get skills that could brighten their future. But she has gotten some insights after three years of volunteering, on what else would help kids.

“If the parents would read to the children more and check over their homework and come to the parent breakfasts meetings that would really help,” she said. “I don’t know why they can’t do that more. Maybe they’re working themselves.”