Literacy – Spanning North America :: Jacksonville FL :: Guelph ON :: Kauai HI

Literacy: Spanning North America

@LearnToReadJax

Literacy nonprofit Learn to Read Jacksonville boosts adults’ reading, writing and math skills

Jacksonville.com: 9.29.2017 by Beth Reese Cravey

At 38, Tracy Maggard was learning fractions.

“Ohhhhhh,” she said, the lightbulb of understanding going off in her head as tutor Sherry Guthrie explained an error she made on a worksheet.

A few minutes later, on another worksheet question, Maggard won Guthrie’s praise.

“How did you figure that one out so nicely?” her tutor said.

Maggard beamed.

Poor reading, writing and math skills had plagued Maggard since childhood, exacerbating the effects of her many physical and mental health problems, she said. Her disabilities and lack of high school diploma made finding employment and maneuvering in the world difficult. But she wanted a job. She wanted a better life. So she came to Learn to Read Jacksonville and is now receiving tutoring in reading and in math.

═════════►‎

Learn to Read, based at the Main Library in downtown Jacksonville, provides free instruction in adult literacy and adult basic education. Proceeds from Saturday’s annual Night at the Library costume event will help support those programs.

The nonprofit, founded in 1969, helps about 500 people a year, according to Executive Director Judy Bradshaw.

One in 5 Duval County residents read at or below the sixth grade level, according to Learn to Read.  READ MORE >>

@ActionRead

Free 'Employability Fitness' program to help adults with literacy challenges land jobs

Statistics show some 16 per cent of adults in Wellington County have difficulty reading basic text

Guelph Today: 10.01.2017 by Kenneth Armstrong

A charitable organization committed to helping adults who have literacy challenges is launching a free training program to assist those adults in expanding their essential skills to help them find employment.

Mira Clarke, executive director of Action Read Community Literacy Centre, said the ongoing need for basic literacy programs may be surprising to some, but statistics show some 16 per cent of adults in Wellington County have difficulty reading basic text — which can negatively affect their employability.

Many people who have no literacy are often very smart and highly skilled, said Clarke.

"It's not something people go around advertising," Clarke said of the literacy challenges many adults face on a daily basis.

The 12-week 'Employability Fitness' program will be offered at the organization's Cork Street location and is intended to offer adults the ability to enhance their essential skills, basic literacy skills and their oral communications in an effort to help them find and retain a job.

“If they get so lucky as to get a job, they still have to use essential skills all of the time in the job if they want to keep it. This is a good way of building in those long-term skills that we know are required in the workplaces — or even just in life — to really be able to thrive,” said Clarke.

She said the program combines many of the services the organization has been offering for some 30 years.  READ MORE >>

@HawaiiLiteracy

Dennis Dresser, A Man of Words

Coordinator of the Hawaii Adult Literacy program shares his love of people

The Garden Island: 10.01.2017 by Bill Buley (Press Reader)

Dennis Dresser leads the Adult Literacy Program on Kauai. Why do you do this?

Might as well get straight to the point. Dennis Dresser wants to help people read.

He’s been doing it for the past 14 years on Kauai as coordinator of the Adult Literacy Program. In that time, he’s helped hundreds of people improve their reading and writing skills.

He’s spent thousands of hours doing it — all of it as a volunteer. His only compensation: the thanks and smiles of those he has assisted, and they range from teenagers to kupuna. Some couldn’t read at all when they started. Some could read a little. Others just wanted to read better.

Either way, Dresser and the team of tutors he leads do what they can.

Oh, Dennis Dresser, by the way, is 86 years old.

He does it, he says, because he loves people. He loves helping those who need help.

“It’s a work of love, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Learning is a chain reaction. You’re learning, their kids are learning, their friends are learning. It’s a chain reaction. It expands. And the more we teach, the more we learn.”

Hawaii Literacy students share one thing in common, Dresser said. They want to read and write better, to make their live better.

And it’s all free, but for the workbooks.  “The drive to learn is in everybody. Just give them an opening,” he said.

What Dresser would love now is more students — and it’s easy to get started.  READ MORE >>