Tammie Bernal has what many asset builders might think of as the ideal job. For one year, her sole mission is to spread word about the assets to all the schools in the Anaheim school district, going into classes to introducing squirming 2nd graders and cool 6th graders to the wonderful world of assets. And, like so many kids across the country, these kids understand the ideas behind the assets. “I think they really get it,” says Bernal. “It’s great.”
Tammie became a teacher on special assignment (TOSA) for assets last year. There is no official asset initiative yet in Anaheim, but there is a great deal of activity bubbling. All the school administrators in the district have attended a training and in 2006 the Tiger Woods Foundation established the Tiger Woods Learning Center there, which uses the assets as its core framework in working with children and youth. It’s Tammie’s job to spread the asset message around, bringing it to the schools and the teachers.
About one week is spent in each classroom. Typically Tammy will do an introduction to the assets with the teachers before she starts with the students. When she does go into the classroom, she walks in with a backpack and stands in front of the room. “Bet you can’t guess what’s in my backpack,” she says to the students. “I’ll give you a hint- they’re school supplies.” She gives the kids a chance to guess, then proceeds to pull out the supplies, one by one, stopping every third or fourth one to ask the kids how this item might help them in school. After she has emptied her backpack, she broaches the subject of the assets. “I tell them, ‘school supplies are things that you can buy with money that help you be successful in school. These other things, these assets, are things that help you be successful in life, but that you can’t buy with money.’” This way they can relate the assets back to something they’re already familiar with, making it easier to understand the concept of not just one but 40 of these things called Developmental Assets. After they have all had a chance to briefly discuss the assets, Bernal hands out paper backpacks and asks the students to use crayons and markers to fill them with the assets that they have in their own lives. When the project is done, the class has a great visual tool to help them remember the assets plus something to display to visitors and the rest of the school.
At the end of the day, Tammie gives all the students an assignment: go out in the next 24 hours and see what assets you can bring into other people’s lives and your own. Now, she says, every time she walks back on a campus, she is bombarded by students telling her how they have started to build assets in others around them. Not a bad job to have for a year.
Tammie Bernal, TOSA in the Anaheim school district, can be reached by phone at (714) 517-7107 and by email at TBernal@acsd.k12.ca.us
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