Literacy – Spanning the US :: Tulsa OK :: Lee MA :: Fayetteville NC

Top 5 Myths about Adult Literacy Learners

TulsaLibrary: 6.30.2017

Danielle Merrill, ELL specialist with the Tulsa City-County Library's adult literacy program, encourages everyone to volunteer to tutor adult learners in need of improved literacy.  Merrill discusses the fact that increased adult literacy means improved quality of life, improved health, and improved childhood literacy rates which helps benefit out [sic] community.  WATCH

@litnetsb

Literacy program gets a little help from its friends

Berkshire Eagle: 6.30.2017 by Jenn Smith

The Literacy Network of South Berkshire started with 11 students and a handful of volunteers in 1991. Nowadays, the nonprofit serves as many as 159 students a month, each one striving to better their literacy skills, and ultimately their futures.

To help residents achieve these goals, LitNet this month launched what it's calling the "American Dream Campaign" to raise funds for services and program materials. The Marblehead-based Gilson Family Foundation has promised to match donations up to a total of $30,000 until LitNet's annual gala, slated for Oct. 14.

The organization relies on volunteer tutors and community spaces to offer free, one-on-one tutoring. It also depends on private funding for materials, tutor training programs and staff and office space in Lee.

"Our funding has been level but our services have been increasing," said Jennifer Hermanski, LitNet's executive director since January 2016.

That fall, the organization marked its 25th anniversary. The current operating budget for LitNet is $204,400. This month's roster includes 132 students meeting with tutors; 13 students on break, and nine students waiting to be matched with a tutor.  READ MORE @

Fayetteville Urban Ministry

Senior tutor making a difference at 67

Fayetteville Observer: 7.01.2017 by Michael Futch

Puerto Rican by birth, Wilma Hernandez was 12 years old before she started to speak English.

Now 67 and retired, she’s teaching English as a second language to a crop of Spanish-speaking students in the Fayetteville Urban Ministry Adult Literacy program. Hernandez has been volunteering her time there as a senior tutor for the last four years.

In part, Hernandez said, she does it as “sort of an homage” to her father, who decided to come to New York from Puerto Rico at the age of 35 without knowing a lick of English. Leaving the rest of his family behind, he landed work in an electrical wiring factory and improved his lot by learning how to speak, read and write English.

“The first thing he said to me when I first came to New York — my Dad had not seen me in three or four years — he said, ‘You’re going to school to learn English because you’re not working in a factory,’” she recalled from her teaching cubicle inside the Urban Ministry building off Whitfield Street. “He said, ‘I work in a factory, and I’m getting out of the factory.’ And he did. He said, ‘You’re going to live a lot better. I want you to be a professional and sit at a desk. That’s the kind of job that I want you to do.’ Everybody had to have a high school diploma. We all had to graduate from high school.”

Hernandez is instilling that same necessity to learn the English language in nine students who originate from El Salvador, Santo Domingo, Korea and Myanmar. She is expected to soon pick up a few more students. In their native countries, she noted, they are all professionals from different vocations.

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“I’m actually teaching them to read, write and speak it. I’m doing all that at the same time,” she said. “They come at a certain level, and I start them (with) all the basics and -I move on. I teach them all phonetics because most of the time they do understand it when I’m speaking English to them, but they have hard time pronouncing it. So that’s why I teach them phonics first.”  READ MORE @