Mary Elise Pirtle is a teacher’s aide, but an unconventional one. Students call her by her nickname to her face: Grandma.
Above her desk, in a corner of the first-graders’ classroom at True Belief Academy, next to pictures of civil-rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama, they’ve crayoned a sign: “Happy Birthday Grandma.”
It went up Nov. 11, the day Pirtle turned 91.
She’s at the Christian school on Indianapolis’ Eastside eight hours a day, five days a week. She is paid marginally, $2.65 an hour, for half her time through Community Action of Greater Indianapolis. The other half she donates.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 9 million of the nation’s 63 million volunteers are older than 65. But the bureau hasn’t broken down the numbers to know how many volunteers are 90 or older. The number is surely small — the average lifespan of an American is just 77.9 years.
Pirtle is the senior volunteer among the 60 who help children at schools, child-care centers, churches and other organizations as part of Community Action of Greater Indianapolis’ Foster Grandparent program.
She’s just a bit older than Theresa Green, who works three or four days a week at Indianapolis Public School 56. Green is 90.
The two, in a league of their own age-wise, were among those honored Friday night at Community Action’s annual dinner-dance, this year in the Madame Walker Theatre Center’s ballroom.
“Grandma Green”
Green goes by “Grandma Green” because there are a half-dozen elderly female volunteers at School 56 (though none as elderly as she). She usually arrives at the school at 8:30 a.m. and takes her place at a table in the hallway. First- and second-graders are sent to her for one-on-one attention, mostly for reading and reading comprehension.
“After they read, I ask them to tell me what they read,” Green said. “That’s about the size of it.”
Green studied piano at a junior college but spent most of her working life doing office work at L.S. Ayres & Co., a once-substantial and now-defunct Indianapolis department store chain.
Even though music turned out to be simply her hobby, “the fact I had to really buckle down and learn something in school helped me in life,” she said.
Pirtle worked at Broad Ripple High School as a cashier in the lunch room from 1967 until 1993, but neither she nor Grandma Green has had any formal training in education.
Pirtle did not graduate from college but received nursing training at Ivy Tech.
There’s a computer in her classroom; she doesn’t go near it. She teaches math with coins and beans, even fingers.
“I didn’t know that”
Taelor Brown, 6, said Pirtle has helped her memorize basic but important facts, such as “one plus three — I didn’t know that. It’s four. Grandma helped me. She wants us to get smart.”
Ajada Humphrey, 7, recalled the time Pirtle taught her to spell “hair.”
Pirtle, who is not much bigger than the second-graders, dresses snappily, like she’s going to church. On Friday, she wore a red jacket with matching skirt and big black boots.
“I like your boots, Grandma,” said Nevaeh Williams, 7.
The grandmas “aren’t someone in an official role, they’re volunteers,” said David Dresslar, a former school superintendent who is executive director of the University of Indianapolis’ Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning. “Even the youngest students recognize when someone is motivated by caring, just by caring.”
But the job is not without frustration, even if it’s not a job.
“These kids, they think they’re very knowledgeable,” said Green. “All of them aren’t like that, but some of them, when you tell them something and show them the way to do it, they don’t think that’s the right way.”
Generally, however, an elderly presence has a relaxing, comforting effect on young kids, schoolteachers say.
“Students are very kind and gentle with our grandmas,” said Beth Masterson, a counselor at School 56. “They look at them differently than a teacher and are sometimes even more willing to listen and have a conversation. Grandmas listen well and are kind.”
Pirtle uses pet names to her advantage, doling out sobriquets such as “Baby Doll,” “Darling” and “Sugar” liberally.
“That’s a little informal for a teacher,” said Roselyn Harris, a teacher at True Belief and Grandma’s daughter.
“But with a grandma, it’s different. With a grandma, it works.”
Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043.
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