Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
Meadow Lake man and his
tutor receive literacy award
News
Bulletin: 2.11.2015 by Deborah fox
For a wheelchair-bound
18-year-old with muscular dystrophy, Jonathan “Andrew” Lozano,
is remarkably upbeat and unbeatable.
The Meadow Lake
resident recently received a reading achievement award from the Valencia County Literacy Council and University of New Mexico
Adult reading program. Brenda Parra, the volunteer tutor coordinator,
presented Lozano the award in a quiet ceremony at the Los
Lunas Public Library.
Lozano’s tutor, Lorayne
Gutierrez, also received an achievement award.
“She’s a really good
tutor, but I also know he is a very good student,” Parra said.
Gutierrez started
Lozano on basic reading skills eight months ago, going over the alphabet,
phonics and then reading simple books. Now, Lozano is reading adult novels and
is currently reading “The Hobbit.”
“It’s been really
rewarding seeing him progress,” Gutierrez said.
Reading opens up the
world.
“It’s fun because it’s
opening up a lot of opportunities,” Lozano said. READ
MORE !
Indianapolis jail
reading program in jeopardy
Indy
Star: 2.15.2015 by Robert King
Indy Reads has offered literacy classes to
county jail inmates for five years, with the idea of turning around the lives
of the prisoners. But now funding for the program is uncertain.
The men in orange,
seated around a table in a room with bars over the windows, are thinking hard —
about metaphors.
Metaphors, for the men
who read reasonably well or who maybe grew up around people with a gift for
language, aren't too much trouble. Sometimes it rains cats and dogs, says one
of the guys. Money just doesn't grow on trees, says another. One young man
offers that some people — he doesn't name names — just aren't the sharpest
tools in the shed.
Some of the men read at
maybe a fourth grade level. For them, the magic of metaphors is elusive. Most
never made it through high school. Yet some of them are sharp tools just the
same.
Helping them become
sharper — and honing their reading, writing and interpersonal skills — is the
idea behind a literacy program that's been a fixture in local jails the past
five years, but the program's future is now uncertain.
Indy Reads, a nonprofit
literacy organization that's been running the jail program, had to eliminate
its classes at Marion County Jail I in November after a key line of grant money
dried up. Unless it can secure new cash, its work at Marion County Jail II,
where the discussion on metaphors took place, could end by summer. READ
MORE !
Korean immigrant
improves skills to tell her story
Argus
Leaders: 2.19.2015 by Jill Callison
After she moved to the
United States with her new husband, Marlin, Chong Buckhaus hoped to continue
her education, starting first with a high school diploma.
The need to help
support her family took priority, however, and for years Buckhaus tended to her
children during the day, then headed off to her night-shift job. The native of
Seoul, South Korea, had to put improving her English writing and speaking
skills on hold.
Now, almost 47 years
after Buckhaus arrived in the Upper Midwest, it’s her time to learn. For the
past year, she has worked with a tutor through REACH, a local literacy program. Those
weekly tutoring sessions have unlocked communication skills that have given
Buckhaus a new dream.
She hopes to write her
autobiography, sharing a life that began on a farm with four siblings and her
mother, evolved into a bold move for a 22-year-old and included contacts with
people both helpful and unkind. READ
MORE !
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