Be The Change

Narvol Randol teaches a class on community to students Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018, at Alma Schrader in Cape Girardeau.

Ben Matthews ~ Southeast Missourian

Volunteer with Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and Narvol Randol is standing in front of a classroom of second-graders at Alma Schraeder Elementary School. First, he leads them in a game of Simon Says, asking them all to stand up and raise their hand if they remember participating in Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri last year. Right hands throughout the classroom shoot into the air. Next, “Simon” says to raise their left hand if they had fun during it. The kids’ left hands fly up, too, and many of them start dancing on the spot.

It’s a popular class, and as the first lesson continues, it’s not hard to see why. Randol reads the students a story about a young girl finding a job, asking them to clap, show their muscles and make dinging noises as he reads certain keywords. Later, the students each receive a card with a different career on it, and read the information to each other amidst excitement and groans from some unexcited by the career chosen for them. Then, they play tic-tac-toe with chips to mark the cards as Randol reads descriptions of each of the jobs.

Narvol Randol teaches a class on community to students Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018, at Alma Schrader in Cape Girardeau.

Ben Matthews ~ Southeast Missourian

Randol also discusses with the kids and how it takes all types of people doing all types of jobs to make a community run smoothly. When he asks what a community is, many students’ hands excitedly go up, but Gunner Hamilton is the one called on to answer.

“A whole place where others come together and different types of buildings are made, and people help each other,” he says.

Randol nods his head and commends Hamilton for a good answer.

Randol, who has been volunteering with the program for the past 15 years and is also on the local advisory committee, says helping students gain these skills they might not otherwise learn is one of the most rewarding elements of this volunteer position.

“It’s really rewarding to see that they do remember what you talk about,” Randol says. “It’s been very positive for me. It’s been a joy to go into the elementary schools.”

Wesley Kuehle, 7, reads his card detailing job titles in a community Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018, at Alma Schrader in Cape Girardeau.

BEN MATTHEWS ~ bmatthews@semissourian.com

Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri is a program in local schools that focuses on financial literacy education, work readiness and entrepreneurship for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. It is taught by volunteers to cultivate community involvement, mentorship and life experiences.

Each volunteer receives a program kit with all of the materials, scripts and activities needed to teach each lesson. The volunteer teacher then spends five to seven sessions in the same classroom teaching the lessons. Each lesson plan is laid out step-by-step.

“It’s very volunteer-friendly,” says Becki Arends, district manager of Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri.

The schools receive the programs at no cost, thanks to grants and donations from businesses. Since the program’s inception in 2000, 7,000 students in Southeast Missouri have been served, with more than 200 volunteers making this happen.

For Randol, who worked throughout his career in business development and commercial lending, volunteering with Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri is a natural way to use his skills, experiences and knowledge to give back and create the future of the community.

“During my career in banking, I helped people achieve their lifelong goals,” Randol says. “Now I’m trying to help these young people think there’s a consequence to everything. I draw on my career experiences and help them understand how money walks through a community, and how it can make a difference in the community.”

On this first-day session with the second-graders, Randol is teaching students who will become the future of our community.

Student Jack Ferrell says he wants to be a science teacher “for fourth-graders through kindergarten” students when he gets older.

Student Aliyah Gonzalez takes a moment to think before replying when she grows up she wants to be “Probably a singer, because every single time I go inside my dad and mom’s car, I always sing and turn up the volume.”

Randol says it is a joy interacting with these students, and that he has many stories he could tell about the children. The teaching is not all a one-way street.

“They’ve helped me learn some things, too,” he says.

Volunteering helps us connect, warding off depression. It helps us feel purposeful. It helps us decrease stress. Volunteering allows us to stay active physically and mentally, create new relationships and even increase our life expectancy.

That’s what the Mayo Clinic says. Through the “Be the Change” volunteer series, TBY wants to help you do all these things while helping our local community. This month, in the fourth installment of TBY’s “Be the Change” series, we focus on volunteering with Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri.

Interested in volunteering with Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri? Contact Becki Arends, district manager of Junior Achievement of Southeast Missouri, at (573) 275-5477 or barends@jastl.org.__