Tutor Spotlighted in CJN
Silver Linings: Lee Markowitz
(This article was originally published in the Cleveland Jewish News 3/28/25, Lydia Kacala)
Solon resident Lee Markowitz has been volunteering since he graduated from college, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Kenyon College in Gambier and his Ph.D. in social psychology from Bowling Green State University.
Markowitz told the Cleveland Jewish News that he has been volunteering as a tutor since his graduation.
“I’ve been tutoring on and off for about 40 years. I first got involved with it after I finished college, and I had a year living at home,” Markowitz, a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School, said. “I volunteered to tutor at my old high school and that was a great experience. That’s really how I got my start with tutoring.”
CJN: How did you get into volunteering?
Markowitz: I was definitely influenced by my father, in particular, who did a lot of volunteering. He was a lawyer and did many things. So, that was when I started, and I tutored on and off for years.
Before I retired, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland in Beachwood had a program called the Public Education Initiative that they started, and I tutored for them on Friday mornings for years, and that was a really good experience.
When I retired, I did have a plan about what I wanted to do and one of things I wanted to do was continue tutoring. I tried different types of tutoring. I tried tutoring different ages.
Right now, I’m tutoring for Seeds of Literacy, which is a program that tutors adults in helping them get their GEDs.
And then, I also do other types of volunteering. Some of it is like ‘one and done’ type volunteering, like the Federation has a Good Deeds Day, and I try to do that when it comes; the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, I try to do that occasionally. But then there’s other things that are longer-term, ongoing commitments.
I have a daughter who has disabilities, and so I got very involved in that because we’ve been looking for housing for her since she was very young. We (Markowitz and his wife, Theresa Markowitz) did a lot of searching and we finally found some people who were doing this, who we had a lot of confidence in. We worked with them to build this community in Solon – Solon Community Living – which just fully opened up this year. I got involved with it just before I retired, and I’m on the board of that organization.
I’ve always been interested in working in the community. Most of the tutoring I did was in the city of Cleveland, in the schools, and some of it was the Federation and some other things.
We also got involved with Greater Cleveland Congregations in Shaker Heights, which I’ve been involved with since 2016, but I’m always interested in working in the community. And so, this is a way to do it and it’s been a good experience. I’m on the board there, too.
CJN: Why did volunteering seem like a good fit for you?
Markowtiz: I always felt like there’s a lot of unmet needs in the community, and I always had an interest in helping out.
One time I wanted to be a teacher, and I didn’t go into that. I went into business. I felt like I wanted to do something to help out the community on the side. And so, I think this is instilled from my family, but I felt like it was a good do. I feel good about it. The volunteer gets as much out of it, or more out of it, than the people that they’re volunteering to help. It’s very rewarding.
CJN: What advice would you give people who are unsure about getting involved?
Markowitz: It’s not like working in the sense that you have to show up every day and you have the pressures of the office or wherever you are every day and you’re trying to get something done. You have a lot more flexibility in volunteering. You can take your time. You don’t have to figure out what you need to do right away. It may take you several attempts to find out what you want to do. And that’s the nice thing about volunteering, you can try something and if it’s not the best fit you can try something else. So there’s not this pressure that it has to work. You can choose the type of commitment that you want.
For example, some people might want to have a more ongoing commitment, but then other people might feel that’s too much time and they don’t want to do that right away, so they just try this or that. And in the end, you can do what you want.
Generally, if you try and look around, I think you will tend to find something that you enjoy and that you can grow from, and you can end up doing that more. And you can volunteer as much as you want. You can volunteer a few hours a week, or you can make it 30 hours a week or 20 hours a week. It’s all up to you.
Markowitz said he looks forward to different things at each of the places he volunteers. In the “criminal justice” type of work he does, he enjoys seeing systems change in a “way that’s positive,” he said.
However, his goal when working with Seeds of Literacy is seeing the people he tutors get their GEDs, he said.
“The thing you look forward (to) when you tutor, you work with the students and then your goal is to get them to graduate, to get them to get their GED. So, when that happens, that’s very, very rewarding,” Markowitz said.
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