Hollister
– When Bruce Green retired from his job as an elementary school
teacher 2003, his life didn’t change much: He still got to school
by 8:45 every morning and worked until well after the last bell
Hollister – When Bruce Green retired from his job as an elementary school teacher 2003, his life didn’t change much: He still got to school by 8:45 every morning and worked until well after the last bell.
The only difference was he stopped getting a paycheck.
“My body was ready to retire but my mind wasn’t. I just couldn’t leave,” Green said.
Green, 63, volunteers at Ladd Lane School – where he taught up until four years ago. Green was a teacher of third, fourth and fifth grade in the Hollister School District for 37 years, and now continues to come into school seven days a week to help out wherever he is needed.
“I’m the unpaid substitute. But my payment is knowing that I’m helping,” Green said.
Green volunteered more than 1,500 hours at Ladd Lane over the past year, according to Barbara Ament, who works as the communication director for the San Benito County Retired Teachers Association, which Green volunteers through.
Ament said volunteering is like a regular job for Green, which he agrees with. He adds, however, that volunteering does have its perks.
The best part of being a volunteer, Green said, is that he has the freedom to participate in the parts of teaching that he enjoyed, without doing the parts he did not.
He gets to be the Mr. Green that gives group hugs and small treasure chests to put lost teeth into, without having to deal with standardized testing and discipline problems.
“I wake up in the morning and I’m anxious to come to school, because I get to do the things I like, but not the things I don’t,” he said.
While volunteering at Ladd Lane, Green fills many duties. He collects attendance, organizes field trips, and fills in on yard duty or crossing guard duty when needed.
Tangie Kretz, the office manager at Ladd Lane, said that she relies on Green to help with many of the small items around the office that would add hours to the end of her day if he were not there to help.
“I’d be lost without Mr. Green,” Kretz said. “He does everything from A to Z.”
Green said much of the enjoyment he gets from volunteering comes from knowing that he is helping out people like Kretz and making her job more doable.
The component of volunteering that he loves is the children.
He said he plans to volunteer at Ladd Lane for as long as he is able, because he enjoys seeing the students every day.
“It’s incredible to watch these little rascals grow,” said Green. “When they come in as kindergartners they can barely do anything. Then as third-graders they can read, and write and you think, how did they learn all that?”
Do you know a volunteer that should be in the Hollister Free Lance’s “Helping Hands” feature? Contact Editor Mike Schmeltzer at [email protected] or 637-5566.
