Literacy:
Spanning the U.S.
Tutors,
bookstore power literacy council goals
Arkansas
Online: 1.11.2015 by Angela Spencer
For many
people, reading is a skill they use daily but often take for granted. When
reading a book, a social-media post or this newspaper, people usually don’t
think about who taught them to read. It is just another skill, like driving a
car.
But what
about those who did not, for whatever reason, learn how to read and write?
Amanda Partridge, director of the White
County Literacy Council, said the illiteracy rate in Arkansas is somewhere
between 13 percent and 20 percent, and in White County, that number hovers
around the 13-percent mark.
-That is
where the White County Literacy Council comes in. The council provides free
adult literacy classes to help people in the community who never learned to
read and write as children.
“The
literacy council is dedicated to teaching adults how to read and write,”
Partridge said.
There
are many reasons adults might not know how to read, Partridge said. Sometimes
they have learning disabilities and were not given a chance to learn to read
when they were in school, and other times, economic factors prevented them from
attending school.
“Most of
our older students grew up in very poor homes,” she said. “They had to stop
school very young and start working.” READ
MORE !
Smiley
Library hired adult literacy coordinator
Press
Enterprise: 1.13.2015 by Penny E Schwartz
Dottie
Podolak, adult literacy coordinator at A.K. Smiley Public
Library in Redlands, learned from a recent phone call that the program has
lost one of its students.
“She had
met her goals and gotten a full-time job, so she no longer needed our
services,” Podolak said. “It was wonderful to speak with her because setting
and meeting goals is the reason why we are here.”
Podolak
is the first paid coordinator of the program, hired part-time in November to
support long-time volunteer coordinators Katherine Gifford and Trudy Waldron.
Podolak works a 20-hour week organizing and doing assessment and tutor
training.
“I have
stepped into a solid program that I see no reason to change,” Podolak said. “I
hope to strengthen the program by providing more resources and to help it grow
in computer knowledge, which is so basic to the literacy skills needed today.”
To that
end, the program will offer a computer literacy class later this month for
tutors and learners now participating in the program. READ
MORE !
Program
to help adults learn to read returning to county
Randolph
Leader: 1.14.2015 by Penny L Pool
Not
knowing how to read can affect every aspect of your life, from getting a job to
reading labels on products in the grocery store.
Annie
L. Awbrey Library is restarting the Randolph County Literacy Coalition in
hopes of helping non-readers, according to Library Director Margaret Calhoun.
"We're
going through growing pains getting it started. We still need tutors. Luckily
we have Kathy Pate on staff and she taught for 35 years. She was my
second-grade reading teacher," Calhoun said.
She is
hoping Pate will oversee the program, she said. The idea is to promote general
literacy by one-to-one contact.
Persons
of any age can get help from a child not reading at the proper level to an
adult wanting to get a General
Equivalency Diploma (GED.)
The
first person to sign up on the list is an English-as-a-second-language student,
she said.
This
program was highlighted for Calhoun at a city council meeting when councilman
Mack Arthur Bell and Jeanetta M. Stephens-Springer made the point if those on
probation can't read the GED test they very well cannot take it. Obtaining a
GED is one of the requirements for those on probation. READ
MORE !
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