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A volunteer's big impact at Craigflower school

Every Monday to Friday, 71-year-old Judie Ker leaves her house on Gorge Road about 8:30 a.m. and walks 10 minutes down the street to Craigflower Elementary.
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Judie Ker reads with Grade 2 student Aiyana Dick-Charleson at Craigflower Elementary School.

Every Monday to Friday, 71-year-old Judie Ker leaves her house on Gorge Road about 8:30 a.m. and walks 10 minutes down the street to Craigflower Elementary.

She is there when the students arrive just before nine and she stays until they leave at the end of the day.

In between, she takes them aside, one by one, and listens to them read, helping when they get stuck, offering encouragement when they get frustrated.

This she has been doing for 14 or 15 years; she has forgotten exactly when it began, though she does remember how.

She read a newspaper article that said young people were leaving school and heading to university without being able to read. She found that alarming, so she decided to volunteer at the school where her children once went.

“For me, I don’t even own a TV set,” she said.

“I mean, I own a TV set, but it is not hooked up. My big passion in life is reading. You can give me any kind of a book and leave me anywhere — it could be on a desert island — and I’d be happy.

“If you can just instill that love of reading. . .”

That is her mission, and she comes equipped with patience, determination and a deep understanding of what it feels like to struggle in school.

As a child in Melville, Sask., Ker was given the wrong glasses to fix an eye problem. She reached Grade 3 before a doctor in Winnipeg discovered the mistake and corrected it. Only then, did school become easier and Ker began catching up to the other kids.

Today, she loves nothing more than watching students make their own breakthroughs.

“It’s the joy of being around kids and watching them grow and blossom,” she said. “When you see them — children who are really struggling — all of a sudden it clicks and then they’re just flying with it.”

Two years ago, Ker received a wave of reinforcements when Wendy Payne, a retired school administrator, and Paulyne Vining, a retired Camosun College employee, recruited a team of volunteers to help with reading at Craigflower, where 96 per cent of the students are aboriginal — many of them from the nearby Songhees and Esquimalt reserves.

The volunteers give more than 200 hours a month to the program. Most work in shifts; Ker, who used to work in banking, is there every day.

Craigflower principal Lynne Moorhouse credits the program with helping raise the school’s reading scores dramatically.

“I would say this is the first time in maybe 10 or 15 years where we’ve had such significant results,” she said. “We’ve never had so many children [reading] on grade level. It used to be 28 per cent. We had a target of 75 per cent — we just pulled it out of a hat — and I suspect we may surpass that.”

There are other factors. The work of staff. Community donations of books and reading supplies. A new reading teacher.

But Moorhouse said the one-on-one time with volunteers is crucial.

“Those volunteers do something that we can’t do here,” she said. “It just doesn’t happen in schools, and 200 hours a month? It’s so significant.”

Not everyone likes the idea. Some educational assistants have pushed back over the years, grumbling that Ker and other volunteers are taking their jobs.

But Ker stuck it out, to the appreciation of parents, teachers and administrators, who recently nominated her for the Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Council’s Arkell Award, given annually to a community member without a child in the school system who nevertheless gives selflessly to students.

Craigflower Parent Advisory Council president Brena Robinson said in her nomination letter that, for a long time, she thought Ker was a full-time employee. “I am still shocked and amazed by her dedication, determination and generosity.”

Ker, who won the award this week, said life would be boring without her volunteer work. Her children and grandchildren live elsewhere, so she visits them on school breaks or summer holidays. The rest of the year she devotes to her other “grandchildren” at Craigflower.

“I get more hugs in a day than 100 people,” she said.

Occasionally, Ker’s friends will suggest she take a day off to spend with them. She always declines.

“No,” she tells them, “I’m committed to being here.”

Even away from the school, she spends time scouring thrift stores for books to give the students. She once spent days trying to find Garfield books for a little girl who would read nothing else.

“A lot of these children don’t have books in their home,” she said, gesturing to a bookcase that she keeps stocked at the school. “So these are all books that they can come in and take and they belong to them and they can say, ‘This is mine.’

“I’ve had children, years later, come back and say, ‘Mrs. Ker, I’ve still got that book you gave me for Christmas when I was in Grade 1.’

“I mean, what we take for granted, a lot of these children don’t have.”

What they do have is Judie Ker, and for some of them, that just might be the edge they need.

lkines@timescolonist.com