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Tutoring Provides Redemption for Cleveland Man

Seeds of Literacy Blog: 6.11.2018

At Seeds, we often ask our tutors to imagine their way into the lives of our students. Michael Gingerich doesn’t have to.

Gingerich started tutoring at Seeds’ West Side location in early 2016. He’d grown up in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood, so it was something of a homecoming for him. More than that, it was a chance at redemption.

The start of tutoring at Seeds came during a dark chapter in Gingerich’s life. He’d just undergone a double knee replacement surgery, a procedure necessitated by his weight—“I was over 400 pounds,” Gingerich says. Due to various health and mobility problems, he hadn’t had a job in six years.

“I hadn’t been around other people in quite a long time,” writes Gingerich in an email. “I decided that before I would be able to work a full-time job, I needed to transition and get used to interacting with people.” He made a plan to volunteer 20 hours a week, and Seeds was part of that plan.

Literacy was a cause close to Gingerich’s heart. School had been a struggle for him, and he’d scraped by with mostly Ds. School counselors had misdiagnosed him with a learning disability when what was actually distracting him at school was secondhand trauma.

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One of the first things he did on getting sober was read the first book of his life. He was 23.  READ MORE >>

Adult Reading Program receives $5,000 from Literacy Foundation

Verde News: 6.07.2018 by Bill Helm

It takes “in the ballpark of $50,000 per year” to run the Camp Verde Adult Reading Program, according to Doug Watson.

Since the program can generally count on $15,000 from the community and another $10,000 from CVARP investments, “about $25,000” needs to come from grants, the program’s director said.

To support adult literacy, the Dollar General Literacy Foundation awarded the Camp Verde Adult Reading Program a $5,000 grant. Said Watson, “this is the first grant we have received this year.”

“It is very difficult to get grants of any amount, as there is competition from across the country for every dollar,” Watson said.

To alleviate costs, the Adult Reading Program has “trimmed working hours for staff, closed our Cottonwood/DES classroom and made greater use of volunteers to reduce the day-to-day operational expenses as much as possible,” Watson said.

Watson said that the Adult Reading Program will use this grant “in 2018 and the future to help provide about 100 students per year with GED preparation assistance, English language learner assistance, financial education classes and computers and technology instruction.”  READ MORE >>

Library program helps parents learn English, read to children

Roanoke Times: 6.08.2018

Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library recently held its first graduation ceremony for the Family READS (Reading and English to Achieve Dreams and Success) Program, provided in partnership with Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley.

@LVNRV 

Parents desiring to improve their English skills and who had preschool children were invited to attend this free 16-hour family literacy program that gave parents new skills and knowledge to help their children be successful in school. Children were immersed in literacy activities, and families learned how to access the library’s free resources and received free children’s books.

Six families graduated from the Blacksburg Library’s Family READS Program on May 21.

Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library was selected as one of 20 public libraries nationwide to receive a $10,000 American Dream Literacy Initiative grant from the American Library Association (ALA) and Dollar General Literacy Foundation.  READ MORE >>

@crliteracy123

Campbell River literacy program for all learners

Campbell River Mirror: 6.08.2018 by Mike Chouinard

When Xiong Chen arrived in Canada a few years, she wanted to improve her English to help her adjust to life in Campbell River.

For the last few years, she has been attending an adult literacy program operated by the Campbell River Literacy Association, which runs several programs out of the Robron Centre.

“When I was first here, I only can use simple words,” she says.

Each week she has been meeting tutor Tom Bishop at the centre for two evenings for a couple of hours.

“Chen had studied English in China, and her English was pretty good,” Bishop says.

They spend the first hour or so going over assignments from a workbook, while they spend the last part of the session talking about newspaper stories or simply having everyday conversation. For example, she tells Bishop about her new experince of camping in Canada with her daughter Orenda and son Kevin. (Her husband is still working in China and in the middle of a process to get a work visa for Canada.) At one point, she has Bishop and everyone in the office in stitches with her story of discovering it was a crow rather than a naughty child that made off with some snacks from their campsite.

In China, she had mostly studied in books and wanted to learn to speak the language more fluently. She thanks Bishop for his tips on firewood and other camping essentials. In turn, she often gives him hints on Chinese cooking, such as how to make a soup using goji berries.  READ MORE >>