https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Danbury-students-bid-goodbye-to-longtime-volunteer-13004692.php
Danbury students bid goodbye to longtime volunteer
Published 3:55 pm, Monday, June 18, 2018
DANBURY — Longtime volunteer Charles Schott was overcome with emotion when 350 children at Morris Street School serenaded him earlier this month.
The children packed the school’s gymnasium to sing an original tune written specifically for Schott, who is retiring after almost a decade of mentoring students at Morris Street and founding the volunteer program Kindergartners In Danbury Schools, or KIDS.
“Mr. Charlie, we love you,” the children sang. “You made us feel so joyful. For all the things that you have done, we are so very grateful.”
What began with just Schott and his wife, Laurie, helping out at Morris Street has grown into a program with almost 80 volunteers across five elementary schools that will continue long after the Schotts move to Mystic later this month.
“Wonderful would be a serious understatement,” he said of the children’s send off. “They blew me away. You do this cause you want to do it. You want to give back in this world. I’ve been extremely fortunate ... It was humbling, it was rewarding, it was gratifying.”
The Schotts’ work in Danbury schools began in 2010 when they agreed to set aside a few hours a week to help kindergarten students at Morris Street School. But they quickly became more involved in the classroom as full-fledged tutors, often helping students for whom English is a second language and who had never attended any kind of preschool.
“We went from nice volunteers spending some time with kids to other caring adults in the classroom that told those students that they were important in this world,” Charles Schott said. “It was a real mental change for us.”
The Schotts returned the next school year with 16 more willing volunteers at Morris Street and hoped to grow the program further. They pitched the idea to Assistant Superintendent Bill Glass and the Danbury-based Association of Religious Communities to organize the formal program KIDS and organize a larger m volunteer force.
Today the KIDS volunteers work with hundreds of the district’s neediest students at Morris Street, Ellsworth Avenue, Park Avenue, South Street and Stadley Rough elementary schools, Schott said.
“Charlie is nothing less than remarkable and hundreds of children are in a better place today because of his selfless efforts on their behalf,” Glass said. “He is a true kid hero.”
Leadership of the KIDS program will be turned over to school staff next fall after the Schotts move from their Brookfield home this summer. A U.S. Navy veteran and former IBM software programmer, Charles Schott joked he plans to “half-retire from retirement” to spend more time on the water in Mystic.
“Of course it’s learning their words and their numbers, but the whole process in kindergarten is also a new social experience and working together in groups,” Schott said. “To see all of these children of many different shades, many different backgrounds, all working together and playing together so nicely; it’s a vision of what the world could and should be.
“If you have a vision of what you can do to make the world a tiny bit better, have at it,” he continued. “Find people who have done something and get some guidance. If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
zach.murdock@hearstmediact.com
