Literacy: Spanning the U.S.
Greene County literacy tutor honored for her
service
Observer-Reporter: 4.16.2017 by Karen
Mansfield
It was during a battle with stage three breast
cancer that Kris Drach discovered how she wanted to spend her retirement, if
she survived.
Drach, who was a colonel in the U.S. Army
stationed in Washington, D.C., in 1999 when she received her cancer diagnosis,
was too sick to work during 18 months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment,
but wanted to spend her time doing “something worthwhile,” she said.
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So Drach visited the Literacy Council of
Northern Virginia and became an English as a Second Language
tutor, where she taught a Muslim woman whose family moved to the United States
from Egypt to seek treatment at a Shriners hospital for the woman’s daughter,
who had been born without a leg.
“A warm, loving, funny woman. I fell in love with
her,” Drach said last month, as she accepted the 2017 Outstanding Tutor of the
Year award from the Tutors of Literacy in the Commonwealth at the annual Pennsylvania Association for Adult Continuing Education
conference at Penn State University.
“Over the next three years, we conquered English,
grocery stores, restaurants, libraries, school letters from teachers and doctor
office conversations, and we found a used computer and we mastered English on
the internet. I was smitten with this work.”
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| @lcswpa1 |
Drach did, indeed, survive her bout with cancer,
and five years ago, the now-Greene County resident volunteered with the Literacy
Council of Southwestern Pennsylvania, a partner of
Intermediate Unit 1.
She serves as the literacy council’s director of
programs, president of the board of directors, tutor trainer, and volunteer
instructor, teaching small group ESL classes and working one-on-one with a
35-year-old student from Vietnam. During her five years serving with the
literacy council, Drach, 64, has volunteered more than 6,000 hours. READ MORE @
Volunteers take first step toward becoming
literacy tutors
Willits News: 4.20.2017 by Ariel Carmona Jr
Individual adults have varying reasons for wishing
to learn to read. There are some who want to pass the written portion of their
DMV test, while others are English language learners trying to pass their GED.
On Wednesday, a new batch of prospective volunteer literacy tutors met in the
Willits Library Conference Room to learn how they can help meet the literacy
needs of the community.
Literacy Volunteers of America, Willits, was
started in 1985 as an adult literary program at the Mendocino County Library Willits branch by
history teacher Alex Carlon and was funded by the County library system until
the funding was no longer available.
According to tutor trainer Pam Shilling, today the
program continues as a 501(c3) non-profit operating on roughly $2,500 a year.
Most of its funding is community raised to cover materials for tutors and learners
and help offset the cost of office expenses.
The program is nestled in a small back office
space in the library. Shilling wears many hats for the organization including
that of trainer and secretary. READ MORE @
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San Antonio Group Tackles Adult Literacy, One
Student at a Time
Reporting Texas: 4.21.2017 by Kaulie Lewis
When Arthur Montalbo was working in Galveston, he
never found the time to take his high-school equivalency test. He had a family
to support, and that came first. The one time he applied for a continuing
education program, it turned out to be a scam, leaving him thousands of dollars
in debt and no closer to his dream of working in computer maintenance.
Years later, his daughter brought him to San
Antonio and encouraged him to pursue his GED. Now he spends his Wednesday
afternoons at the Each One Teach One headquarters, going
over algebraic equations with a tutor in preparation for the test.
“I’ve had some rough times before, but they really
help you out here,” he says.
Each One Teach One, the organization behind
Montalbo’s GED prep, is the only adult literacy education nonprofit serving the
greater San Antonio area. Though San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the
United States, it ranks 73rd in national measures of literacy
according to U.S. Census data and a report from Central Connecticut State
University. Roughly one in four San Antonio adults is functionally illiterate,
defined as reading at or below the fifth-grade level.
“The need is just horrendous,” said Carolyn Heath,
the founder and director of Each One Teach One. “And it’s not just San Antonio;
it’s Texas.” Now her organization is doing all it can to help.
Heath began Each One Teach One in 2004 after she
noticed adults at a tax preparation site struggling to fill out their intake
forms. Soon, students were coming from across the city and its suburbs. “We
learned that we had just stumbled on one of the most serious issues facing our
city.” READ MORE @
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