“They were teaching me.”
Before COVID-19 abruptly interrupted the 2020 school year, Mr. Ronald Gillum, 77, was helping to produce a 1-act play with some 6th and 7th graders at Brookside Charter School. Writing the play was his idea, but the students did all the work and they titled it “Kids’ Talk.” One of the students played an Oprah Winfrey-esque character who interviewed a celebrity panel to discuss topics like fashion, current events, and rap music.
When Mr. Gillum asked if Cardi B should be mentioned in the play, the students were shocked. “You’re old, how do you know that?” He just laughed, relishing the wisdom and bits of knowledge that come with a long, full life.
Mr. Ronald Gillum, Foster Grandpa.
Photo Credit: Zachary Linhares
Mr. Gillum was volunteering at Brookside Charter School as part of the AmeriCorps Senior Foster Grandparent Program with Reconciliation Services. The program connects older adults with limited incomes to mentorship and volunteer opportunities with at-risk youth in our community. Since 2010, Reconciliation Services has run the program, which places 60+ volunteers at 27 locations across Jackson, Clay, and Platte Counties.
COVID has kept Mr. Gillum and his fellow volunteers out of the classroom since the spring of last year. But the Foster Grandparents have continued serving their students, including hosting a sock and underwear drive this winter to help out families struggling through the pandemic. They collected over 600 pairs of socks and over 650 pieces of underwear to distribute.
Mr. Gillum is using his extra free time to write a book about the neighborhood where he grew up in Kansas City. Leeds is tucked south of I-70 along a road called Stadium Drive, just west of Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums. Before the stadiums were built in the early 1970s, Stadium Drive was called Raytown Road and it was the main drag in the Leeds neighborhood.
When Mr. Gillum was growing up in Leeds, many of the residents walked to work every day to a General Motors Assembly plant that was there until 1988. He remembers Leeds being like a small town within a town, where everyone lived by the principle that “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Mr. Gillum first got involved with the Foster Grandparent program four years ago as a volunteer at Border Star Montessori School. He was introduced to the program by two of his sisters who were already volunteers. They are both retired school teachers and Mr. Gillum spent some time substitute teaching in the past. He quickly took a liking to working with first and second graders “because their minds were still open.”
When Mr. Gillum and his sisters were about that age, their mother read to them all the time. He says they grew up in a “print-rich” house full of magazines and books. While they were in school, their mother saved up enough money to buy a full set of the Collier’s encyclopedias. Mr. Gillum said the neighbor kids would knock on their door all the time and ask to use the encyclopedias for their homework.
At Border Star, one of Mr. Gillum’s first assignments was to work with a second grader we’ll call Lamont, which isn’t his real name. Lamont was way behind his classmates in reading, he was very high energy and was known to “act up” in class.
As they spent time sounding out the words and figuring out the meaning of the sentences, Lamont’s trust in Mr. Gillum grew along with his reading comprehension. Lamont shared that he rarely ever saw his father, but he did enjoy hanging out with his big brother whenever he was home from college, which wasn’t very often.
Lamont could be a little territorial with the other students when Mr. Gillum was in the classroom, he had grown attached to his reading tutor. But overall, his behavior improved in class as he was able to keep up with the other students academically. By the end of the year, Lamont had improved by two reading levels, according to his teacher. His favorite book to read was “The Polar Express,” no matter what season it was.
Giving extra care to at-risk students is a hallmark of the work Foster Grandparents do in schools. When Mr. Gillum transferred to the Brookside Charter School, he was assigned to a young man who had anger issues. The young man would get so frustrated in class that he’d start to stomp around the room and become quite the distraction for the other students.
The teacher had 32 kids in that class according to Mr. Gillum and didn’t have time to spare for the student. While the young man cooled off in time out, Mr. Gillum gave it to him straight, “That’s not cool, man. You shouldn’t do that.” Quickly the young man started to open up and to share what was on his mind. Mr. Gillum listened and gave the young man encouraging words. After a few sessions together, the young man’s behavior began to improve in class.
Mr. Gillum always did his best to keep the students engaged in his lessons, deploying his own creative flair. As he worked on reading with the students, he incorporated games and simple crossword puzzles. When the students began to run low on attention, Mr. Gillum had coloring pages at the ready. Intricate designs of dogs and butterflies kept students’ hands and minds busy as they negotiated amongst themselves over who got to use which color. The finished products made great decorations to keep the space alive and welcoming.
Another way Mr. Gillum made the students feel at home was with a small library of donated books that he kept on hand. Each of them featured African American children, the stories spanned from before the days of slavery to present day. Mr. Gillum noticed the students really took to this library. They learned things about African American history they had never heard before, and many of them had never even come across books with characters that looked like them.
Mr. Gillum took just as much care curating his little library as he did making sure he looked professional every time he stepped foot in the classroom. The kids would say “Mr. Gillum, you wear church clothes and church shoes.” At first he didn’t understand what that meant, but he eventually caught on. He wasn’t wearing jeans and his leather shoes had square edges.
He always answered their questions honestly and made a point never to let himself get caught off guard when their questions were meant to shock him, “I was teaching them and they were teaching me.”
Mr. Gillum sees every interaction as a way to teach the students how to interact with their elders. He never takes a single conversation for granted, knowing how important his work is for the Black community. “When an elder dies, a huge library is lost.”
Mr. Gillum is also well aware that many of the boys he’s working with are growing up in single parent households without a father around to model good behavior. He worries that the boys may only look up to rappers that they see on television, too many of which curse and say demeaning things about women.
He recalls telling one young boy, “I can’t tell her to stop crying, but I can tell you to stop hitting.” While that’s only one message that the boy will receive in a day, Mr. Gillum knows that it may stick. He still remembers the elder he looked up to in the Leeds neighborhood: Mr. George Perry, his grade school principal. Mr. Perry was refined. He wore suits, spoke well, drove a beautiful car, treated everyone with respect, and “stood head and shoulders above the other men” as Mr. Gillum remembers it. Things like that leave an impression.
The students leave an impression on Mr. Gillum, too. He can tell when they’re having a bad day. He can tell when they come to school hungry. He sees when they’re not wearing socks and can smell when it’s been awhile since they had a shower. It’s hard not to be heartbroken when you can tell that a student is homeless. He always encourages them, impressed by their strength that carried them through the school day.
Mr. Gillum looks forward to getting back in the classroom. As of this writing, the Foster Grandparent volunteer corps is masked up and back in three schools in the Kansas City area. He hopes the students will finally have a chance to act out their play and he wants to hear their original song, “The Girls of Brookside.”
While the pandemic has granted him plenty of time to work on his book, he misses the kids. “Being a Foster Grandparent has been a good use of my time because it keeps me involved in the community. It keeps my creative juices flowing. If I’ve interacted with 50 people and helped even only one, I feel it was well worth it.”
To learn more about our Foster Grandparents program, including how you can sign up to volunteer, visit the website. To support Grandpa Gillum and the at-risk students he serves, make a donation of just $25 to Reconciliation Services. It truly takes a village.