”All I wanted to do was impact the classroom,” says Joyce Rumsfeld, chairman and founder of the Chicago Foundation for Education, a nonprofit organization that works to improve Chicago schools. ”I knew it could be better; that`s the bottom line.”
Rumsfeld and her husband, Donald, Chicago natives, had an intimate knowledge of the Washington, D.C., school system, which their children attended while he was a congressman from Illinois from 1962 to 1969, in President Richard M. Nixon`s administration until 1973, and as U.S. ambassador to NATO (1973-74), chief of staff (1974-75) and secretary of defense (1975-77) under President Gerald Ford.
”I knew the problems in that system in the `60s,” says Joyce Rumsfeld, who serves on the National Board of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and the University of Chicago Woman`s Board.
”Besides busing and integration problems, they were searching for a way to get the proper support to the teachers so they could keep the students in school. And it was always on my mind that any big city, including Chicago, would have similar problems.”
When she moved back to Chicago in 1977, Rumsfeld began thinking about what she could do to help Chicago.
Her daughter had sent her an article from California about a new
”character education” curriculum designed to improve student behavior by adding regular class discussions about decision-making and social situations. She called the marketer of that curriculum, the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute in Pasadena, Calif., and told them she wanted to know everything about it.
That was in 1978 and Rumsfeld since has dedicated herself to improving Chicago`s public schools.
”For several years I tracked this curriculum everywhere it was being used in the country. A few principals were using it in Chicago, and I got a very positive reading from them. So I began looking for ways to raise money to get this (program) into more Chicago schools.”
Rumsfeld started the Chicago Committee for Character Education in 1984, which in 1985 became the Chicago Foundation for Education board.
”We began raising money and made the decision that we would start working with two districts. We set up the requirement that the principal must want the program (in the school). We didn`t feel it would work if we just put it in and made people use it.”
Rumsfeld became the chairman of the foundation, and her friend and assistant, Marcia Littlejohn, became the president. Almost immediately they began to expand the work of the foundation to include the awarding of grants to teachers to support extracurricular projects
The foundation, which has an annual budget of $266,000, has awarded 875 grants to teachers in 229 schools since beginning the program in 1987.
Littlejohn spearheaded the drive to launch the grant program.
”Marcia said we could do it,” says Rumsfeld, ”and we did, the same year that we were getting the character education program started.”
That first year the foundation awarded 99 grants to Chicago teachers. The concept is simple: Teachers come up with ideas for classroom projects, such as starting newspapers or literary magazines, exploring individual scientific projects, implementing neighborhood recycling programs or writing to students abroad. Teachers apply to the foundation for the money (up to $400).
”I think it`s incredible what this group has done, just through volunteers,” Rumsfeld says. ”This school year, our fifth year of granting awards, we had 1,343 applications. Every application is read (by volunteers)
to see that it meets our guidelines. We had about 150 community readers this year, all ordinary citizens, an incredible cross-section of the population.” Littlejohn explains: ”We believe the teachers know what they need, so we never ask a reader to judge whether the program is needed in the school. We accept the need. What we`re looking for is a plan. We are looking for teachers who are trying to give a little spark to their kids. It doesn`t have to be something that`s never been done before. It just has to be something that will interest those students in learning.
”By just making the application, the teacher is thinking about ways of improving her teaching, ways of involving the students,” Littlejohn says.
”Active student involvement is really important.”
Louanne Holland, the foundation`s program director, says the group gives schools a feeling of community support and trust: ”We are volunteer-driven, and they know we really care about them. And it`s exciting for the community to see the good education that`s being presented by the teachers.”
Rumsfeld, Littlejohn and Holland have visited many schools involved in the program.
”At one school,” Rumsfeld says, ”the teacher burst through the door and threw her arms around me. She`d never seen me before; she just knew I was there from the foundation to observe. She said, `You`ll never know what this has done for me.` She had the local priest and the district superintendent there for the observation. She was showing what her class could do, and she was so proud. When I think of what $400 can do to give people energy and excite the students, it`s just incredible.”
Littlejohn had a similar experience in a science class: ”The children were so engrossed in their project they didn`t even know I was there. But the best part was that the teacher told me she wanted this grant to help her teach a subject area where she didn`t feel especially confident. It was a great feeling to see that we had helped strengthen a teacher in a weak area and the students were really thriving.”
Konora Maxwell, an 8th grade teacher at the Horace Mann School on Chicago`s southeast side, received her first grant in 1987 to purchase Shakespearean literature that had been edited for young people and puppets to be used to dramatize Shakespearean works.
”The children really enjoyed the literature part of the program,” says Maxwell, ”but they were reluctant to dramatize what they had read. That`s when the puppets were brought in. With a simple puppet stage and a curtain between them and the audience, the children who enacted the play were so vocal, so enthusiastic, that you could hear them in the other classrooms.
”Children in other rooms started asking to be invited to see the performances, and this grew into an idea for a permanent puppet theater.”
Maxwell received a second grant the next year to create a permanent puppet theater and have scheduled performances. Now students often create the plays that are presented.
”It has become an integral part of what our school is about,” she says. Maxwell got a third grant to create a gallery to give the 8th graders an opportunity to act as curators for work done by children from kindergarten through 8th grades at the school.
Aided by her fourth grant, Maxwell is working on a project in which each child creates a family tree and does genealogical research throughout the country, and sometimes the world.
”I think the people at the foundation have their hearts in the right place,” Maxwell says. ”They seem to understand that it doesn`t always take a lot to make an idea fly. But it does take a little something to get it started. And once you have the seed and people see that the foundation is supporting you, it lends legitimacy to the idea and people will help you. And it`s because the foundation has said it`s a good idea, they`ve endorsed your idea by supporting it. So it`s more than just the money they give you.”
This year the Foundation for Education funded 400 projects. In June it will hold its third annual workshop for teachers to view the projects of others.
”We have around 40 presenters, some from the previous year,” Littlejohn says. ”We also invite our grant-application readers and other individuals to observe the award-winning projects in action in the schools. It`s another way to tie the community to the schools.”
Rumsfeld and Littlejohn say they continually are inspired by the faces of children. ”When you go to visit,” Rumsfeld says, ”all you see is potential.”
