School Volunteer Uses BCPS Education Foundation
To Provide Promise for Young Learners

First-grader Emmanuel Hill wants to be a super hero when he grows up. Molly Shock would like to help him do just that.

Emmanuel’s classmate at Halstead Academy, Josh-Neal Taylor, has decided he would like to be a firefighter. And Molly Shock, a classroom volunteer at Halstead for nine years, has pledged to help him do that, too.

In fact, Mrs. Shock has promised to help each one of the 22 children who were in Gwendolyn Smith’s kindergarten class last year. By committing $50,800 of her own money towards postgraduate plans for each child, Mrs. Shock took a big, generous step towards repaying the joy she has received from those children during her darkest hours.

“Really, this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the joy they have given me,” Mrs. Shock said recently during an emotional ceremony to recognize her beneficence. “I want them to know they can be anything they want to be after they graduate, tractor-trailer drivers or neurosurgeons – I don’t care. I just wanted to give them something back to thank them for what they gave me.”

Mrs. Shock’s extraordinary gift – her “50th birthday gift to myself” – was made possible through a collaboration with the BCPS Education Foundation, an independent not-for-profit organization that works with donors to support projects that benefit county schools or their students.

Working with the Foundation, the Shocks invest their gift over the next decade and will make it available to each of the designated first-graders upon their graduation from high school – regardless of where that will take place.

“You both model everything we talk about when we talk about the importance of caring, loving parents and adults making a positive difference in the lives of children,” BCPS Superintendent Dr. Joe A. Hairston told Mrs. Shock and her mother-in-law, Betty Shock, who also has been a volunteer reader at Halstead for nine years and joined her in presenting a $50,800 check to the school systems’ Education Foundation.

“This is what contributing to public education is all about – what giving is all about – the Shock family,” Dr. Hairston said.

Added John A. Hayden III, a member of the Baltimore County Board of Education and Chairman of the BCPS Education Foundation, “You are so inspirational to many of us.”

The gift was one more example of the Shocks’ pattern of giving and caring. Nine years ago, the pair came to Halstead after being inspired by a sermon at their church, Loch Raven United Methodist Church. “The minister suggested we could make a real difference by getting involved in our local schools,” Molly Shock said. “So we began to volunteer here every fall to read to the children, and it has been wonderful.”

The Stoneleigh resident, a mother of two boys herself, spent every Tuesday morning in a special “Rock and Read” corner of the hallway outside the kindergarten rooms. There, sitting in small classroom chairs while students sat in comfortable rocking chairs, she and Betty Shock would read books to individual students.

But in January 2002, the reading stopped. Molly Shock’s husband of 26 years, Stephen, passed away during treatment for cancer, leaving his wife devastated and uncertain about the future.

“Eventually we came back to the school, but it took a while,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was ready for this, especially since the hardest part was yet to come with the holidays and all.”

If Mrs. Shock wasn’t quite ready, the children were. They showered the Shocks with affection and appreciation upon their return to Halstead, and let the pair know just how much they were appreciated. “The children gave me such joy at a really difficult time,” Molly Shock said. “Sometimes coming here (to Halstead) was the only joy I would find that week.”

Moved by the solace she found among the kindergarten class at Halstead, she began looking for a way to show her appreciation. The idea formed more fully when one day she happened to see a television show featuring a foundation for children set up by basketball star David Robinson.

“I asked myself, ‘I sure would like to do something like that,’” Molly Shock said. “And then I realized, ‘Hey, I can do something like that.’”

The final step was finding the school system’s Education Foundation. Founded in 1992, the Foundation is operated by a volunteer Board of Directors drawn from business and civic leaders. Since its inception, the Foundation has successfully collaborated with other non-profits, government agencies, businesses, and the parents and communities of many County schools to support a number of projects. For the Shocks, it would provide the “perfect avenue” for Molly Shock to make her gift, she said.

During the recent ceremony to sign an oversized check and to thank the Shocks, the parents of many of the students who will benefit could hardly contain their delight and gratitude.

“I’m a single mother of five, and this is such a blessing, you have no idea,” said Tonia Hill, Emmanuel’s mother, as she embraced Molly Shock.

Added Joyce Olive, the mother of Taylor Olive, “We really appreciate someone else taking an interest in our children, because they really are our future.”

Nearby, Pamela Taylor held her son’s hand momentarily and shook her head. Josh-Neal broke away long enough to sit down with his classmates as they feasted on orange and black iced cookies.

“It’s a really amazing thing to have a child that young get something like this,” she said. “It’s amazing not to have to worry about how you’re going to finance whatever it is they decide they want to do.”

As for Josh-Neal, who loves art and reading and who wants to be a firefighter when he grows up, he had no worries this day.

Not with a cookie in his hand.

Not with his mom visiting in class.

And not with Molly and Betty Shock in his life.

See event photos

Story and Photos by Charles Herndon Communications Officer