Marion Stone
As co-founder of Working in the Schools, Marion Stone oversaw 1,500 volunteers in improving Chicago’s public schools. Stone began her career as a social worker both in schools and in private practice in Chicago. She founded her community’s first nursery school, participated in anti-war movements, held community and political forums in her home, and served as president of the National Council of Jewish Women and numerous other educational and cultural boards. While serving as chair of the education department at the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California, she developed a volunteer program bringing art instruction to the elementary schools. She created a similar volunteer program with Joanne Alter in the Chicago schools. In 1991, she began tutoring with Alter in Cabrini Green, an inner-city neighborhood. Their organization, Working in the Schools, has grown to include 1,700 volunteers serving 31 public schools in Chicago and offers programs ranging from tutoring and mentorship to summer programs, benefitting 2,500 students every year. Marion Stone was honored at the 2004 Women Who Dared event in Chicago.
Marion discusses growing up with Russian immigrant parents in Chicago Heights, as well as the segregation in that area, and how her family interacted with and participated in the Jewish community in that area. She describes attending the University of Chicago, where she studied social work, and her first experience of antisemitism there. She talks about pursuing a degree and career at a time when women usually went to college in search of a husband instead of a job. Marion recalls her family’s experience during the Great Depression, and how her mother opened a hat shop to help their family survive during that time. She shares her experience doing missions in Israel, as well as sending her children and grandchildren to Israel for bar and bat mitzvahs, and the ways in which she has financially supported Israel. She worked as the president of the National Council of Jewish Women. Marion and used her social work experience to work in the Park Forest school system in Chicago with learning disabled students, and working in WITS (Working in the Schools) in Chicago. Marion introduced an art program, a six-week course in the visual arts, with volunteers in the Coachella Valley for third and fourth graders when the schools had cut funding for the arts. Finally, Marion discusses her experience balancing her career with being a mother.
