She's there for the children.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

As Jane Rapier tells it, she happened to be driving her red convertible Ford Mustang past Edison Elementary one day and thought, `Here's a school, I'll go ask if I can help.' '

Eighteen months later, Principal Tom Maloney has himself a de facto full-time employee with an oddball demeanor, a stubborn streak and a knack for firing kids up about reading.

Rapier, a 68-year-old retiree from Cottage Grove, spends five days a week at the school, arriving at 7:30 a.m. and leaving about 2:30 p.m. Though she doesn't attend staff meetings, she has a key and occasionally pops in to work on weekends, too.

With guidance from instructional assistant Jaye Dibos, Rapier has carved out a niche to which she seems especially well-suited. In addition to helping out in the library, she works mostly with children one-on-one or in small groups.

"She's working with kids who maybe need a little extra attention - some of our bright, kind of eccentric kids," Maloney said. "That kind of describes Jane, too."

One such charge is 6-year-old Maxfield Poizat-Newcomb, a somewhat introverted, dark-haired boy who was reading before he was in kindergarten.

While his first-grade classmates work on their reading lessons, Maxfield visits Rapier in the ground-floor Reading Room for daily half-hour stints. The pair usually begin with a bit of reading from a workbook, but things soon take a more adventurous turn. On a recent day, he followed the triangular route of 18th- and 19th-century slave traders, pushing toy sailing ships and spice jars labeled "tobacco," "molasses" and "rum" around a laminated floor map of the world. Another time, he built a model volcano and blew it up.

Then there's Rapier's ongoing tale of the princess and the purple dragon, handwritten on sheets of paper Maxfield finds by following clues to nooks and crannies in various rooms.

Rapier calls Maxfield "a dream," and the boy says working with her is one of the best parts of his day.

"She takes (students) on these adventures," said Dibos, who recognized Rapier's gifts and bonded with her right away. "They get to learn in a way that is so unconventional, but just really seems to work."

A grandmotherly woman who favors yard-sale clothing and classic children's literature, Rapier spends many hours - and, according to Dibos, lots of her own money - preparing and gathering books, toys and props for her one-on-one sessions. She works individually with a half-dozen students, and she caters activities to each.

"Every child is different, they all have different interests," said Rapier, who is staunchly opposed to standardized, phonics-based reading curriculum - including the school district's recently adopted program, which she describes as "very lockstep. I mean, good heavens, there's no creativity!"

Some children, Rapier firmly believes, "don't learn from just reading, they learn from touching and building things."

She and her husband of 48 years, Jerry, spent most of their lives in Los Angeles, raising five children - three adopted, two biological. He worked as a scientist/engineer for government defense contractors; she tutored students in her home and spent one year as a fifth-grade classroom teacher.

It was not her forte.

"I get involved with one child and what they're doing, and by the time I look up the other 27 are on the walls," said Rapier, a Pepsi addict who drinks about five cans a day.

In the early 1970s, the Rapiers packed up and moved to Israel, spending seven years on a kibbutz, a communal farm. The children were all under 10 at the time.

"Mostly I raised chickens there," said Rapier, who, with her husband, had converted to Judaism before the move. "I wanted to drive a tractor, that's the main reason I did that."

The couple moved to Oregon about five years ago, settling on Cottage Grove after falling in love with an 1885 Victorian home they now share with five dogs and two cats.

In her spare time, Rapier scopes out yard sales, where she buys clothes as well as classroom materials and collectibles. One of the rooms in her home is filled with stuffed animals, another with organ pipes (she's taking pipe organ lessons). She also likes building furniture and quilting.

As if her volunteer work at Edison weren't enough, she and Jerry spend several afternoons each week, and often a couple of hours on Saturdays, at the Lane County Animal Regulation Authority, where they walk and cuddle with the dogs and clean yards.

"She and her husband have just fit in so well here," Director Mike Wellington said. "They'll come in and socialize with the dogs. They are so good at doing this - you can see the pleasure in the animals, you can see the pleasure in them. The dogs love them and our staff love them."

Last summer, Rapier tutored a half-dozen Edison students in their homes, at no charge.

"They needed that continuity," she said. "Besides, I needed something to do. I'm not able to sit still."

She also hand-catalogued nearly all of the elementary school's library, despite Maloney's pleas not to.

`I said, `Jane, you can't do that. Please don't. We have the computerized system.' She did it anyway," said Maloney, who noted that Rapier can be a bit "labor-intensive."

She said she had no choice.

"It's the only way I can find things," she said. "I don't do computers. They don't like me. It's a personal thing."

Rapier has also tried unsuccessfully to rid the library of "junk."

"If I had my way we'd get rid of `Captain Underpants,' ' she said, shaking her head. "I mean, good heavens!"