Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
Literacy Council helps to improve
reading skills
Alexander
City Outlook: 11.15.2014 by Robert Hudson
For one Lake Martin Area United Way
agency, helping the area’s under-educated adults improve their reading skills
is the mission.
The Lake Martin Laubach Literacy
Council is a Lake Martin Area United Way agency that goes one-on-one with
adults who either cannot read or are seeking help improving their reading
skills.
“The mission is to serve
under-educated adults in our community who read below a fifth-grade level. Our
main program is one-on-one tutoring. We train volunteers to work with adults
who need to learn how to read or improve their reading ability,” said Rita
Cream, director of Lake Martin Laubach Literacy Council. “Then we match that
volunteer with an adult student who has asked for our services, and they meet
about once a week for two hours and work together until they achieve the goals
that the student has.”
Cream said one area where the
Literacy Council has been finding success in its mission is working with the
family members of its students to ensure that those students can continue to
work and improve outside of their tutoring sessions.
“One of the things that we’ve done
the last couple of years that has proven successful is that for some of our students
who are a little bit more open about not being able to read … I’ll work with
someone in their family,” Cream said. “They’ll have homework, so with this
they’ll be able to practice with that family member. Where our student has
allowed us to work with a family member, they get to do some work outside the
tutoring section, and that has led to faster success.”
Cream said the Literacy Council
provides an important outlet due to the value being able to read has in
affecting a person’s life.
“A lot of us, we read and we don’t
really think about it – we just do it. But just think if you couldn’t read, you
didn’t have the ability, and how much that would change your life and impact
what you could do,” Cream said. “It would change everything from the type of
job you could have and your participation in the community. So when an adult
learns to read, it doesn’t just impact them, but their family in all types of
ways.” READ
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NPO Showcase: Literacy Center of
West Michigan
Rapidian:
11.17.2014 by GRTV
This segment of NPO Showcase
features Dr. Wendy Falb, the new Executive Director of the Literacy
Center of West Michigan.
Dr. Falb joins us in studio to
discuss her new role as Executive Director, what drew her to the mission, and
how the Literacy Center is working to build a literate community. The Literacy
Center provides literacy tutoring programs to strengthen reading and language
skills. Volunteer tutors provide these programs, and the Literacy Center is
always looking for new volunteers who want to help change lives through
reading. You can learn more about the Literacy Center and how you can get involved
at their website.
Literacy programs imperiled in New
Orleans
Alex Woodward on what the New
Orleans Public Library budget crisis means for reading programs
Gambit-Best
of New Orleans: 11.17.2014 by Alex Woodward
We've heard this story before. The New Orleans Public Library
(NOPL), facing a massive budget shortfall and with no additional funding from
the city, may close or severely limit hours at branches, lay off staff and cut
already underfunded programs. How did we get here — again?
In 2012, the library system saw the
reopening of several branches, with Mayor Mitch Landrieu leading a ribbon
cutting outside the Rosa F. Keller Library and Community Center in Broadmoor,
his old neighborhood. Reopenings followed in Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans
East and Algiers, and the NOPL now has 14 branches open, the most since 2005
when Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods destroyed several libraries.
Charles Brown joined NOPL as head librarian in 2011 and has helped usher in new
programs, ebooks, digital services and other updates, including one of the most
ambitious goals within the NOPL yet, topping even the back-to-back-to-back
branch overhauls and reopenings: By 2018, the city aims to be the most literate
city in the U.S.
It's a tall order. According to
NOPL, more than 40 percent of people in the city ages 16 and older struggle
with basic literacy. The New Orleans Community Data Center estimates more than
a quarter of the city's workforce has little to no reading, writing or computer
skills — more than double the national average. Many New Orleans literacy
programs are full, with some keeping waiting lists as long as a year.
At the NOPL's annual budget hearing
before the New Orleans City Council Nov. 10, Brown warned — again — about the
library nearing "a crossroads," with its reserve funds drying up
while operating five new locations.
"I'm not sure how we allowed
this to happen," District B City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell told Brown
at the hearing. "We have not done well by you, by libraries, by our
people." READ
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