HUNTINGTON BEACH : School District Honors Volunteers

Retired English teacher Joanne Belben, 80, devotes about six to eight hours each week helping students at Marina High School sharpen their writing skills.

She, along with hundreds of volunteers, put in a total of about 30,000 to 40,000 hours a year at six high schools in the Huntington Beach Union High School District. Combined, their work is worth about $1 million a year, district officials say.

Belben, who is finishing her 20th year as a volunteer at Marina and nearly 60 years in education, plans to be back next year. She senses the enthusiasm and dedication of fellow volunteers, “And I say, old girl, I guess I can make it another year.”

Belben, a resident of Seal Beach, was honored recently by the district for her unpaid service at a recognition breakfast for volunteers in Fountain Valley.

She and other volunteers have become more important as education revenue dwindled in recent years, according to Jerry Sullivan, board president of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. The volunteers impart expertise and experience and serve as good role models for the youngsters, he said.

“We should tap into the community for more of them,” he said.

Volunteers serve as tutors, gardeners, bingo game assistants and do many other jobs. They repair athletic equipment, hand out textbooks, stack books in libraries and build sets for graduation night parties.

“They are our treasure,” district volunteer liaison Trish Landau said. “They communicate to the students that they care.”

In one of the main benefits of the program, tutors provide one-on-one instruction, a rare commodity in today’s increasingly crowded classrooms.

That ability to focus on the work of individual students as a tutor is one reason that Belben is planning to be a volunteer for her 21st year, she said.

Belben retired from full-time teaching in 1973. She started teaching in 1934 in Whittier, spent 30 years in the Compton Unified School District as a teacher and then was an English consultant to the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools.