Our Honored Tutors - 15 years of service
Standing, Left to Right: Bev Jack, Congresswoman Judy Chu, Cass Armstrong, Board President Jack Mills, Judi Pocock
Seated, Left to Right: Lissa Petersen, Ellen Hamilton, Chris Caenepeel, Barbara Rugeley
Celebrate CLASP 2025 honored seven people whose volunteer service to CLASP goes back at least 15 years, and in some cases back to the very beginning in 2005. Without dedicated people like these, CLASP could not achieve the incredible impact it has on the lives of our students.
Cass Armstrong volunteered for CLASP after meeting Wheeler Park site supervisor Maria Martinez. Cass has degrees in anthropological linguistics and information science. Among her many career accomplishments, Cass served as the librarian for Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena. Through her tutoring experience at CLASP, she developed a special interest in dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects the ability to read, write and spell. When asked why she has continued to tutor, Cass stated that she found the experience to be very rewarding. “When I retired, I got involved with literacy as the best use of my skills—helping students in a way that would make a huge change in their lives. It’s really rewarding to watch them make progress.”
Chris Caenepeel retired from Cal Poly Pomona as a professor of chemical engineering. After that, he says he was looking for new challenges. With the encouragement of last year’s honoree, Jim Keith, Chris volunteered to work with CLASP. Chris Caenepeel’s forte has been teaching students to solve math problems, particularly our older male students. Chris’ site supervisor said “Chris is a dedicated and focused tutor. Chris helps instill in our students the habits of organization, self-discipline, cooperation and respect.”
Ellen Hamilton retired in the spring of 2010 from 23 years of teaching mostly kindergarteners in the Ontario Montclair School District. At the invitation of CLASP board member Teddie Warner, Ellen started tutoring with CLASP that fall. Otherwise, she figured she would miss her young kindergarten friends and wanted a worthwhile activity for her free time. We value her extensive experience working with English Language Learners and teaching reading. Ellen says it has kept her young to be part of CLASP and stay connected with people in the community—both young and old. She has kept coming back for 15 years for several reasons: seeing the growth in students’ skills and academic knowledge and forming friendships with the other tutors.
Bev Jack taught at Claremont High for 25 years, specializing in special education. At the urging of Carole Harter, she volunteered as a CLASP tutor the following year—and, in addition, for the last eight years Bev has served as a CLASP board member. Bev says she continues to tutor because: “it helps me stay current”. She doesn’t have any young grandchildren, so she enjoys learning about things from young folks at CLASP—like K-Pop Demon Hunters and Bad Bunny! If you don’t know what she’s talking about, that’s why you need to volunteer to be a tutor! Bev says tutoring introduces her to college students and other members of the community she wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise.
Lissa Petersen was one of the CLASP founders. Many people have gotten involved in causes to improve life here in Claremont after getting that soft-spoken but urgent call to action from Lissa. Maybe her persistence and persuasiveness have to do with the seven years she spent teaching English to high school students in Boston and Baltimore or her 10 years on the Claremont Board of Education. In any case, teaching is her passion. She has decades of experience with programs to help international and other college level students learn how to write. Lissa says that even the best of parents can be confronted by obstacles that make it difficult to sit down with their kids and help them with their homework and CLASP makes up for that. She has kept coming back to tutor because it is very satisfying seeing struggling students become successful.
Judi Pocock learned about CLASP while attending a Claremont Kiwanis Club presentation by Carole Harter and Suzan Smith. She decided that volunteering for CLASP would fit a retirement goal to regularly do something that could have a positive impact on a child’s life. For 17 years she has tutored 3 or 4 days a week. Judi says that “tutoring provides me with a purpose in retirement. It has given me some daily challenges and many rewards that could happen only working directly with a child each day. By far my most rewarding accomplishment has been to help many children learn to read well. Each child I have worked with has provided me with a chance to learn new skills that help students academically and socially. I have found tutoring to be the most rewarding of all the volunteer work that I have done over many years.”
When Barbara Rugeley was a second grader, she read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and came to understand why adults wanted her to read. And so, she said: “Students need to hear beautiful language and see charming illustrations to WANT to read it themselves.” After retiring in 2010 as a librarian at Citrus College, the first thing Barbara did was volunteer to be a CLASP tutor. She had been a volunteer storyteller at Sumner Elementary School for many years, so she knew the students and saw they needed academic support. An important skill she has learned is listening to a student to understand how their day went and helping them to reset so their tutoring session can be successful. Barbara says it is rewarding when a student is happy to see you for tutoring. What has kept her going for 15 years, she says, is the satisfaction of seeing students catch up to their academic level.