Volunteer shares life and love of books with children
Published: April 11, 2005
Mapleview Elementary School classroom volunteer Joyce Topinka doesn’t give up on students when they get frustrated. She gives her all.
“The biggest thing you can do is sit and encourage them,” said Topinka, 48, of Appleton.
“Especially when I work with first-graders, they tell me the book is too long. I use a lot of ‘I wonders,’ like ‘I wonder what the ball is doing on the street’ or ‘I wonder why that dog’s nose is wet.’ Anything to make them keep going on that book.”
Topinka became a regular volunteer at Mapleview about four years ago, when the youngest of three siblings she cared for started school there. She’s since become like another teacher for Mapleview’s first- through third-graders, said teacher Kris Hechel.
“If you asked the kids, they probably wouldn’t realize she isn’t a hired staff member in our building, because of what she does for us,” Hechel said. “She’s just another team member. She just has this innate ability to know who needs help and how she can help.”
For her commitment to children’s education, Topinka will receive the Daniel P. Spalding Volunteer Educator Award during the eighth annual Celebrating Our Volunteers event April 19 at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in downtown Appleton.
The Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region Inc. and The Post-Crescent sponsor the event. School Specialty Inc. sponsors the award.
Topinka never asks anything of students that she would not do herself, especially when it comes to reading, said Hechel, who teaches third grade.
“She definitely leads by example,” Hechel said. “We share about our weekend (in class) and she will say, ‘I read this book,’ or ‘I read this many hours.’ She herself will be a member of the summer library program. She doesn’t send somebody where she hasn’t walked.”
Vicki Wills of Darboy, whose three children were Topinka’s charges in day care, said it’s all the more special to her two sons — now in fourth and sixth grades — that “Aunt Joyce” regularly spent time in their classrooms.
“The kids missed being at her home so much but they got to see her in a different setting,” Wills said.
“She dedicates hours upon hours to the school, takes money out of her own pocket and just does everything for those kids.”
Every fall, Topinka throws a pizza party for students who complete the local library’s summer reading program.
“It was an idea started by her,” Hechel said. “We have had nearly 100 percent participation three times now.”
Topinka often scours the library to find books on topics her students like. A fan of pigs, she once donned a mask for a special read-in day to narrate a turned-around story she discovered about “three little wolves and a big, bad pig.”
She also creates personalized word searches for birthdays and other holidays, Wills said.
When Topinka was very young, her mother read a chapter or two aloud to her every night.
Now 83, her mother supports her work with children by understanding her busy schedule.
“If she needs something, she works around my days at school,” Topinka said.
Topinka said when the Kimberly Area School District restructures its existing buildings and constructs others, she hopes to follow Mapleview’s young students to a new elementary school.
“I don’t think I can spend my time in a better way,” she said. “I’ve learned that you don’t have to make money to be rewarded for what you’re doing. It’s very rewarding because you’re in it for helping someone else.”
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