Literacy – Spanning the US :: Santa Cruz Co CA :: Des Plaines IL :: Alameda Co CA

Literacy: Spanning the U.S.     

@volunteercruz

Literacy Program Teaches Lessons in and out of County Jail

Inmates say that learning better English will help them lead more fulfilling lives after their release

Good Times SC: 1.10.2018 by Patrick Dwire

At the Santa Cruz Main Jail, at promptly 8 a.m., five inmates file into a program room for their twice-weekly English as Second Language (ESL) class, led by a volunteer tutor from the Literacy Program. It’s one of many programs under the umbrella of the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County.

“When I get out of here,” inmate Alvaro Perez says with a heavy Mexican accent, “I want to be able to speak English with my daughter, and maybe help her with her homework someday.” A few of his classmates nod in agreement.

“It is very important to know some English out there,” says another student, Salvador Serna, “especially to find work, but also if you want to talk with your kids, who are learning English, not Spanish.”

The Literacy Program stepped up to the challenge of providing ESL and GED prep courses at the county jail and Rountree Minimum Security facility beginning in 2012, under the leadership of Genie Dee, the former Literacy Program coordinator, as part of state-funded reforms. Dee passed away on Aug. 18 after a short but ravaging bout with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Dee led the Literacy Program with unflagging dedication for six years, and built up several features—including the jail component—making it a vital, volunteer-driven, no-cost English-language tutoring service for adults throughout the county. The program now has 250 volunteer tutors, many of them retired teachers, for about 300 student learners, not including the approximately 30 students in jail.

More than half of the student learners are between 30 and 44 years old, 78 percent of them women, of which the majority have children. The tutoring is done mostly one-on-one, and focuses on learning functional, day-to-day English, as well as financial literacy, life skills and emergency responses that require English. There are also tutors specializing in math and other subjects required to pass the GED. There are currently 60 people on a waiting list for a tutor.  READ MORE >>

Oakton ESL classes pave the way to success

Chicago Tribune: 1.10.2018 by Community Contributor Oakton Community College

Upon arriving to the United States from war-torn Iraq with her family, Noora Badeen registered at Oakton Community College to learn English, a decision that changed her future by providing the key to success in furthering her education.

In May 2017, she graduated from Oakton with honors and received a scholarship to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Badeen's experience with Oakton's English as a second language (ESL) program is not uncommon; in fact, the need for these educational services has never been greater.

In 2014, 1,784,403 foreign-born individuals resided in the state of Illinois, accounting for approximately 14 percent of the state's population, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The immigration population is diverse, and sizable shares hail from Latin America, Asia and Europe. In the district Oakton serves, 29 percent of the population was born outside the U.S. Sixty-eight percent of residents speak English only, and the remaining 32 percent are bilingual, speak Spanish only or do not speak English well.

"The benefits of an ESL education are clear," says Linda Davis, senior manager of adult education, who oversees the college's ESL, literacy, family literacy, high-school equivalency (GED), night high school, citizenship education and VITA (Volunteers in Teaching Adults) programs. "Learning English is crucial for integrating into mainstream society and the workplace. Moreover, classes provide immigrants a leg up in their ability to find work, allowing them to have an income to buy goods and services, pay taxes and to pursue the American dream."  READ MORE >>

Write To Read

Alameda County reading program aims to help young offenders

Write to Read allows youth to find their voice at Camp Sweeney

East Bay Times: 1.12.2018 by Darin Moriki

For more than 10 years, Cyrus Armajani has been a man on a mission.

In that time, the Alameda County Library employee has held a job with one goal in mind: ensuring that incarcerated young men at Camp Wilmont Sweeney, the county’s detention facility for youth convicted of low-level offenses, not only improve their reading comprehension skills but also unlock their literary voice.

“I think the idea is that, for me, literacy is kind of our traditional ideas of reading and writing, and it’s also being able to read and understand the world and feel empowered to act to make it a better place,” Armajani, 44, said Tuesday in his small classroom at Camp Sweeney.

As a literacy specialist in the county library’s Write to Read program, Armajani is solely tasked with helping many of the young men at Camp Sweeney improve their reading skills. For four months at a time, at least 16 young men — separated into small groups of four or five — participate in Armajani’s classes twice a week.

In his ground floor classroom at Camp Sweeney next to a recreation yard, books arranged meticulously on shelves, placed neatly on tables or tucked away in cabinets suggest a theme. There is “The Rose The Grew From Concrete” by late rapper Tupac Shakur, “Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word” by Linda Christensen, and “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop” by Kevin Koval.

“The students are very well aware of social injustices that exist in the world, so by framing the work we do together with a social justice lens, it kind of implicitly answers the question of, ‘What is the point of the work we’re doing here together,’ ” Armajani said.  READ MORE >>