Literacy – Spanning North America :: Charlottetown PEI :: Philadelphia PA :: Mesa Co CO :: Anne Arundel Co MD

Literacy: Spanning North America      

@PEILiteracy

Adult education, literacy alliance turned P.E.I. woman’s life around

The Guardian: 5.07.2018

Kim McGrath Myers was a 39-year-old single mother of five living in poverty.

As a girl she dreamed of being a social worker or a police officer. But, after dropping out of high school in Grade 11, she accepted that she would never have the education to do anything but unskilled, physical jobs.

Thanks to her determination and support from the P.E.I. Literacy Alliance, McGrath Myers has now fulfilled her dream and works to help women recover from addictions at Lacey House in Charlottetown.

McGrath said she asks her clients who they dreamed of being when they were young.

“Like them, I never once said “depressed, suicidal, hopeless, or uneducated,’ but that's where I ended up – and with five children who depended on me.”

The first of many doors opened for McGrath Myers when she was encouraged by a friend to return to school for her GED (general education development) diploma. She wrote an essay to the literacy alliance that won her a $500 bursary and got the ball rolling.

However, she didn’t want to go to her own graduation ceremony.

“I was still ashamed to acknowledge my past lack of education,” McGrath Myers said. “For me I had spent a lifetime ducking and dodging education questions and learning new skills in jobs. This would be a public ‘outing’ to me.”  READ MORE >>

@FreeLibraryCook

Through Cooking, Immigrants Better Understand English, America

VOA News: 5.07.2018 by June Soh

Food and conversation go together like love and marriage; they are a natural pairing, one that evokes home and comfort.

That is exactly why the Free Library of Philadelphia offers cooking classes to immigrants and refugees. They learn American cooking, sure, but they also learn the English language.

The six-week course is called Edible Alphabet. On a recent Thursday, a dozen students from Iran, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil and France, among others, gathered in the Free Library's kitchen. This class, the last of the session, focused on pizza. While the name is Italian for pie, pizza is a ubiquitous American dish.

“We are going to measure the dry ingredients,” instructed chef Jameson O'Donnell. “Flour, salt, yeast…”

“Each week the students are learning English through a recipe,” explained Liz Fitzgerald, the Free Library's program director, “and they're learning the names of ingredients. They're learning where to buy the ingredients. They're learning how to navigate a grocery store.”  WATCH VIDEO

@mesacountylib

Libraries' Career Online High School graduates inaugural class

Daily Sentinel: 5.09.2018 by Erin McIntyre

The graduates nervously adjusted their caps and gowns before the first notes of "Pomp and Circumstance" rang out from the speakers.

Their families sat waiting, clutching programs, some also grasping handfuls of tissues ready for the tears to come.

One by one, they walked down the aisle, ready to receive their diplomas. Though they had never met each other previously, these six women had something in common.

Something happened earlier in their lives that got them off track and prevented them from graduating with their peers in high school. They forged another path, one that led a different way for years. But then they each decided to turn their journeys back to earn high school degrees through a new program at the Mesa County Libraries.

However circuitous their journeys were coming to this common achievement, it didn't matter. They had arrived.  READ MORE >>

@AACLC

Anne Arundel County Literacy Council dinner celebrates tutors, students

Capital Gazette: 5.09.2018 by Sharon Lee Tegler

The room was crowded and the buffet line long as tutors gathered with students and their families for the annual Anne Arundel County Literacy Council Appreciation Dinner at Woods Church on April 26.

Reading and writing tutor Jan Booth and husband Larry were surrounded by a table full of grateful students and proud family members. The former teacher and Anne Arundel County Community College professor said she admired her students’ courage, receptiveness, and determination to conquer reading.

To her right was student Ray Williams and family. To her left were student Brian Martin and his wife Brandi.

Williams would be the evening’s featured speaker and Martin, who’s been in the AACLC program for five years, would reveal how well it’s broadened his horizons.

One table over, tutor Antoinette DeVito was all smiles as student Gilbert Fouch arrived with his family and handed her a bouquet of flowers.

A retired public school teacher, DeVito enjoys coaching adult students one-on-one in the writing, word recognition and language arts skills needed to read well. She said some students learn best through phonics. Others, like Fouch, need to “see” the text on the page.  READ MORE >>