Local Opinion: Responsibility to help in Tucson's education crisis

As a literacy volunteer, an Arizona native and someone passionate about education, I keep my antenna up for news on local schools, like the recent reporting that TUSD is facing a crippling teacher shortage for the coming year. One fix they’re weighing: Elevate K–12, a Chicago-based company that would livestream into Tucson classes, where kids at laptops would be overseen by “classroom managers.”

I used to tear my hair out over Arizona’s scrimpy spending on education. Bald now (unrelated), I’m no less dismayed.

The latest data from the National Education Association shows Arizona at No. 48 of the 50 states in per-student spending, No. 44 for average teacher pay — a state where public school teachers make less than 70 cents for each dollar earned by other professionals with comparable education and experience.

But I’m not writing (just) to moan about inadequate funding. The challenges in our public schools are complex. Financial investment alone won’t fix them, but I know something that can help: everyday people investing their time as volunteers.

I began volunteering with Reading Seed, a program of Tucson nonprofit Literacy Connects, a few years back. I started with the trepidations I imagine haunt a lot of people who have considered volunteering, but not taken the plunge: What if the kids don’t like me? What if I don’t like them?! What if I really have nothing to offer, and it’s an embarrassing waste of everyone’s time?

Today, I’m so grateful I put those fears aside and did it anyway. I have a good life, and many things make me happy, but nothing gives me the simple joy that I get from working with kids.

Reading Seed can be proud of its outcomes. Teachers report that students in the program level up their reading skills 30% faster than their peers and that 98% show increased engagement. I respect those numbers, but I don’t need them to know that my coaching time matters.

I’ve witnessed a girl who wouldn’t speak transform into an all-smiles chatterbox, eager to dive into our books despite still working to learn the alphabet. I’ve had boys tussling over who gets to read with me first. And while that strikes me as something of a miracle, the greater mystery is what volunteering does for me.

Being a reading coach challenges me in ways that no other area of my life does. When I’m with my students, I want to be fully present, fully authentic. I want to keep a fully open mind and heart and be 100% receptive to whatever arrives from one moment to the next. When appropriate (and it almost always is), I want to have fun.

Maybe some people live that way all the time. For me, it’s the couple hours a week I volunteer.

Growing up, my family had no money, but I had the privilege of living in homes with shelves and shelves of books — mostly tawdry, thrift-store paperbacks, but a treasure, nonetheless. I had the privilege of being raised by a mom and grandma who loved to read and who happily shared that love with me.

I had those privileges, and beyond adding pro-ed hashtags to our Facebook posts and pro-ed bumper stickers to our cars, I believe that now more than ever, we need to pay our privileges forward.

Tucson teachers are asked every day to do more with less. Kids are finding their way as best they can in an overburdened, understaffed system still reeling from the upheaval of the past two years. Volunteers won’t solve that. But if you can give a few hours a week in our schools— as a bookworm, math nerd, history buff or just a caring adult — you will make a difference. And you will get back so much more.