Teaching The Future: Steve Gastineau

PSCDC and our Chatham Village Apartments residents in Orange County greatly appreciate the community volunteers and community contributors who work with them. They are an extremely important and invaluable part of the success of our resident services. Creating a strong sense of community is something PSCDC strives to achieve and our volunteers, contributors, and partners really embody the altruistic sense we hope to develop in our communities in California.

Steve Gastineau, a volunteer at Chatham Village Apartments, has shown great commitment to our residents and has volunteered every day of the week Monday through Friday from 3:00 - 4:30 PM for the last two years. His devotion to volunteering began when he retired. Looking for something to do, he volunteered at a grammar school as a way to stay busy. He worked full time with mostly autistic, high-school students for 17 years! After his wife passed away, he moved from their four-bedroom house into a one-bedroom apartment. When he discovered that Chatham Village Apartments provided tutoring, he graciously offered to volunteer.

When asked about his favorite thing about tutoring children, Mr. Gastineau remarked that he enjoys seeing children learn so quickly: "I like watching how, almost by magic, the children learn to read, spell, punctuate, add, subtract, multiply, and divide."

Mr. Gastineau helping a student at Chatham Village Apartments

"Recently I had a student who insisted that he could not learn the multiplication facts," Mr. Gastineau recalls, "his insistence usually resulted in tears. Every day we studied the facts and how to find them. I don't know if anything I did helped him, but he almost mastered the facts."

While Mr. Gastineau has helped and impacted the lives of many Chatham Village residents with his volunteering, he has really helped Genesis Pineda with tutoring for the past two years. Genesis's mother, Carla Pineda, said that his tutoring has proved to be invaluable by saying, "I am very grateful for the help that Mr. Gastineau gave my daughter. Before coming to tutoring, Genesis had many problems with math and reading and today, she greatly improved to the point that s]e was given recognition at school. Thanks Chatham Village Community Center for offering this help to our children."

Mr. Gastineau has been working with Genesis Pineda with math and reading for two years

Mr. Gastineau hopes to continue his independence in the future so that he can continue to do what he loves to do. PSCDC also hopes that he continues his impact on the younger residents at Chatham Village Apartments and to thank him for his incredible support for our tutoring services! PSCDC would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of our volunteers across California! Thank you!