THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240524
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 102 lines
The book on the table says ``math.'' But today's tutoring topic isn't so much Albert Einstein as it is David Copperfield: It's about ``tricks.''
Once you figure out the tricks, volunteer Martin C. Tann is saying, the math is easy. He's trying to sell this idea to Kilby Shores Elementary School fifth-grader Terrell L. Johnson. Terrell's not buying, though. Not yet.
It's a Wednesday afternoon, and that means the two are huddled for their weekly one-hour session in a closet-sized office-storage room deep inside the school. Tann, 35, the maintenance engineer at nearby Thomas J. Lipton Inc., one of Kilby Shores' several business partners, continues his pitch.
Today's problems concern translating decimals. Everywhere that it says ``and,'' Tann tells Terrell - as in ``five and forty-one hundredths'' - replace the ``and'' with a decimal point: 5.41.
``Oh!'' Terrell says, shaking his head as he catches on. Eraser hits paper.
``It's easy,'' Tann insists. ``Piece of cake, now that you know all the tricks.''
He points to another problem. ``Do it. Don't be afraid. Do it.''
``On my own?'' Terrell asks.
``Yes.''
Terrell bends over his paper.
This is one way partnerships between schools and businesses work: employees donate time in the schools, tutoring, reading stories, judging science fairs. Others donate things, such as restaurant coupons for high grades or perfect attendance, supplies for the students' vegetable garden, even decorations for the school Christmas tree.
The crew of the now-deployed Navy frigate Halyburton exchanges letters with Kilby Shores' third-graders to help with the students' writing skills, provides weather reports from around the world for fourth-graders' science lessons, and gives the ship's coordinates so fifth-graders can practice mapping.
``There's just a wealth of expertise and experience,'' said the school's principal, Carolyn Dixon.
The best at sharing its wealth this way in the past year was Lipton, according to the Suffolk division of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber today will award the tea importer its annual Planters Peanuts' Outstanding Partner of the Year Award.
Businesses, civic groups and others pitching in to help their local schools goes by different names - it's called ``Partners in Education'' in Suffolk - but they accomplish the same thing. Schools get welcome help and some of the pleasant extras - food and gift incentives, adult mentors - that the children enjoy. Businesses pick up good public relations and a hand in producing the kind of students they one day may want to hire.
And it's a growing trend - from seven participants in Suffolk in 1989 to 63 today - that's been embraced if not needed by chronically money-strapped schools.
Each of the city's 15 public schools has two to seven partners, said Bethanne D. Bradshaw, program coordinator. The main goal is to improve student achievement, she said, but it also provides students a connection between the classroom and the real world, such as when a carpenter shows how he uses geometry in his job.
``It also helps to have an adult involved in their life who doesn't have to be - not a parent, not a teacher, not a principal,'' Bradshaw said.
The number of such school-business partnerships in America has at least tripled since a 1989 survey 140,000, said Jane A. Asche, vice president of the National Association of Partners in Education in Alexandria.
``Businesses are recognizing that to have a healthy economy they need to have well-educated employees,'' Asche said. ``They're very interested in the product the schools turn out.''
She agreed with some critics who warn that businesses and other ``partners'' could, intentionally or not, influence school curriculum. A few years ago in Greensboro, questions were raised about a grant from a tobacco company to a school system, and whether it could inhibit teaching about the hazards of smoking. Asche said her group teaches that partners' goals should be consistent with the schools they're paired with, and they shouldn't try to usurp educators' roles.
At Kilby Shores Elementary, Principal Dixon said that during the summer she discusses with her school's partners the ways they can help.
``We do what the teachers tell us to do,'' said Carol S. Harry of Lipton, who coordinates the company's partnership efforts.
Lipton has donated resources and employees' time - and that of employees' family members and retired workers - to Kilby Shores since 1991, starting with eight volunteers and now more than 50 employees.
Several tutor students one-on-one. School officials said maintenance engineer Tann's positive influence on Terrell has been particularly powerful. It's turned a sullen kid who was a frequent involuntary visitor to Dixon's office into a polite, friendly boy who hasn't been in trouble all year.
Terrell, still shy, says his weekly tutoring from Tann is ``OK'' and his biggest help has been in math, particularly division.
Tann, a father of two from Virginia Beach, isn't much more comfortable talking about why he volunteers. His company stresses it, of course. And he's become friends with Terrell, to whom he gave a new - and much-needed - book bag for Christmas. But there's more to it, for him.
``I think you should give back to the community,'' Tann said.
``Some days I feel good. Some days I feel like I wasn't as effective, like I didn't break a barrier. Some days it's great. Some days it's hard. But you've got to give something back.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot
Lipton employee Martin C. Tann works with fifth-grader Terrell L.
Johnson at Kilby Shores Elementary School in Suffolk. Today, the tea
import company will receive an Outstanding Partner of the Year Award
for its work with area schools.