Foster grandparent Pat Lowell, 70, helps Elk Meadow Elementary kindergartners Joel Hammons, James Parker and Bradley Hughes learn to count by playing a game called “More or Less” with them at the school's all-day kindergarten class.

Known to Elk Meadow Elementary’s teachers and students as “Grammy Pat,” Pat Lowell spends a few days each week helping students in the southwest Bend school’s all-day kindergarten class learn how to recognize sight words so they can read, write short sentences and count from one to 10.

“I taught children years and years ago and all this stuff sort of comes back to me,” said Lowell, 70, a former teacher who is able to continue making a difference in children’s lives through the Central Oregon Council on Aging’s foster grandparent program.

Through the foster grandparent program, COCOA has matched nearly two dozen foster grandparents with children at Central Oregon schools. The agency is recruiting more volunteers who would be willing to work with students in areas where the demand for their services is especially high.

“We’re always looking for people who care about children,” said Steven Guzauskis, who manages COCOA’s foster grandparent program.

The grandparents

Lowell taught preschoolers, kindergartners and elementary school students in the San Francisco Bay Area and southeast Pennsylvania for decades before she decided to retire in 2009 and moved to Central Oregon a year later.

Soon after she moved, Lowell stopped by COCOA’s office to speak with someone about setting up her Medicare benefits and ended up getting recruited for the foster grandparent program.

“(The woman who helped me) said we’re starting up a new program for foster grandparents,” Lowell said.

“‘You’ve been a teacher in the past, would you like to help us out?’” she recalled the woman saying.

Founded in 1965, the foster grandparent program is one of three national senior volunteer programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency that engages Americans in community service programs like SeniorCorps and AmeriCorps. The program is managed in communities by local groups such as COCOA, which took over the foster grandparent program’s Central Oregon operations in April 2010.

The foster grandparent program’s 28,250 volunteers nationwide served 215,700 children across the country in 2012, according to the program’s website.

Guzauskis currently works with 23 foster grandparents who work at 13 schools in Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson and Wasco counties.

About half of these schools – Elk Meadow Elementary, Cascade Middle, High Lakes Elementary, Ponderosa Elementary and Rosland Elementary – belong to the Bend-La Pine School system, said Guzauskis, who is targeting his recruitment effort toward people who could work in Crook and Jefferson counties.

Foster grandparents must be at least 55 and complete a series of tests including a criminal background check, a medical screening, a suitability screening, and a 40-hour training course before they can be assigned to work at a particular school.

According to the program’s rules, they must commit to spending at least 15 hours per week working directly with students in the classroom and in exchange could earn a stipend of $2.65 per hour that’s paid through a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Guzauskis said he leaves the process — determining which grandparents work with which schools, assigning them to work with a student or a group of students, and making sure they’re being put to the best use possible — up to the individual school systems, administrators and faculty.

Under the program’s rules, though, preference is given to schools where more than 40 percent of the students qualify for a free or reduced-priced lunch. Fourteen of the Bend-La Pine school system’s 28 schools — Marshall High School and each of the school system’s 17 elementary schools except Amity Creek, High Lakes, Highland and Miller — meet this criteria, said Dana Arntson, director of federal programs for the school system.

“We’re just trying to fill the need that exists within each system,” Guzauskis said.

The results

During the 2005-06 fiscal year, the Corporation for National Service conducted a survey evaluating the foster grandparent program and its other SeniorCorps programs to recognize the programs’ 40th year and demonstrate their results as a way to encourage retiring baby boomers to join their ranks.

“Principals and other administrators report that the relationships between young people and their foster grandparents lead to positive behavioral outcomes,” reads the report, which found that even though foster grandparents worked with an average of 40 students over the course of a school year, they had a profound impact on their students’ lives.

The survey found foster grandparents working in the schools enhanced students’ self-esteem and improved their ability to form relationships with others. It also found that:

* 58 percent of school administrators said they saw an increase in school attendance rates for their participating students.

* 51 percent said participating students seemed more motivated to take part in extracurricular activities.

* 84 percent said their students performed better academically after taking part in the program.

* 74 percent said their participating students had better study habits that lasted through their academic careers.

“Any connection or extra attention we can give the kids helps them emotionally, socially and academically,” Elk Meadow Principal Bruce Reynolds said when asked about the foster grandparent program and its results. He also said Lowell was “a keeper” because she and the school’s other foster grandparents provide his school’s teachers with some extra support that helps the teachers make sure all of their students are getting what they need to succeed.

From her perspective, Lowell said, having a foster grandparent like herself in the classroom is a huge help because she can grab small groups of students who may need some extra help with a particular lesson and focus on their needs without holding up the rest of the class.

“It’s just so different now,” Lowell said, explaining she could give her students this type of individualized attention when she taught school but that it’s almost impossible for teachers to do this now without extra help because both class sizes and the amount of material that needs to get covered have increased considerably since she retired.

She’s also had a chance to see the impact she’s had on her former “foster grandchildren,” whom she bumps into from time to time at Elk Meadow’s cafeteria and other school events. Many of them will come up to her and say, “Hi, Grammy Pat!” today even though she hasn’t worked with them for two years.

Lowell said the program has given her a chance to continue working with children in a way she said was “heartwarming and rewarding” for her because she can see the results firsthand.

“It’s just a perfect fit for me,” said Lowell, who said she’d be suffering from cabin fever if she wasn’t a foster grandparent. “It’s so nice to do something and feel appreciated for it.”

Become a foster grandparent

The Central Oregon Council on Aging is looking for residents of Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson and Wasco counties who are 55 or older and interested in taking part in its foster grandparent program, which provides one-on-one mentoring and tutoring services to students in need.

Foster grandparents get a stipend of $2.65 per hour, and must complete a criminal background check, a health screening, a suitability screening and 40 hours worth of training and must commit to spending at least 15 hours with their students/schools each week.

To learn more about the program, call COCOA at 541-678-5483.