Lincoln School honors volunteers for efforts over past two years

An assembly at Lincoln School provided the administration with a perfect time to honor Gwyn and Scott Jensen for their volunteer work at the school for the last two years.

The Jensens, from Helena, wrapped up a two-year mission for their church during which they volunteered at Lincoln School two days a week to help Lincoln Elementary School teachers with everything from math and reading to teaching kids to tie their shoes.

Scott said the recognition, which included crowns for both of them, caught them totally off guard.

"I think it's because it's my wife last time, they wanted to say thank you. Lincoln cannot be outdone in that category. They are incredible," he said."

They had all these grades preparing thank you notes and stuff. They embarrassed us by putting us out in front of everybody. Every one of them came to hug us or shake our hands. It was awesome."

"Mrs. Jensen's two-year mission time is up, so she's going to stay home in Helena," Lincoln School superintendent Carla Anderson said. "Mr. Jensen has way too much fun, so he's going to keep coming."

"My wife actually is a teacher, a certified teacher. She gets put on teaching detail. I'm an entertainer," Steve said. "I get to just have fun and entertain."

Steve said if he had known how much fun teaching could be, he might have chosen that as a career. The Jensen's had been volunteering on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but Steve is now planning to come up three days a week to help.

"The rewards are incredible," he said. "So, I'm going to come up on Tuesdays now and work with individual kids who are behind to catch them up. We're finding that most of these kids are quite intelligent. Some of them have a hard time comprehending how the question is worded, things like that. We help them process that. Once they understand the question, they're getting perfect scores."

"They just love kids," said Annette Gardner, the school's reading coach, who worked with the Jensen's both as a teacher last year and in her new position. "They're so helpful. Mr. Jensen likes to read to them, or lots of times kids need individual help, like with shoe tying."

Gardner said they helped with a wide range of subjects, and didn't scrimp on the time they spent at the school during the days they came up. "They're here two days a week and they spend the whole day; they go from place to place."

Scott said they worked with all the elementary teachers, but said he probably worked with 1st Grade teacher and Librarian Joanie Templeton and 5th Grade teacher Stacey Mannix the most.

Despite their volunteer efforts stemming from a mission with the Church of Latter Day Saints, Anderson said it wasn't something they talked about.

"I didn't know that for the first six months," she said. "I thought they were just volunteers because they liked kids."