Literacy – Spanning the US :: Birmingham AL :: Cadillac MI :: Wichita Falls TX

Literacy: Spanning the U.S.     

@literacy_update

At 88, Fred Oliver Spends Several Hours Per Week To Become A Better Reader

Birmingham Times: 6.21.2018 by Anita Debro

At age 88, Fred Oliver is learning how to read better, so he spends several hours a week of his retirement years at The Literacy Council (TLC) of Central Alabama.

“I want to be able to read better than I already do,” he said.

When Oliver starts telling a story, he sits up just a little bit straighter in his chair as he speaks. His eyes, turned a watery blue from 88 years of seeing, focus on some memory invisible to the listener.

He recounts the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor: he was a young man sitting in church, where his adoptive father was preaching, and the police came into the church and warned about the attack. He recalls the time he met Jackie Robinson: he was having breakfast in a Connecticut hotel and the baseball legend walked right over to him. He recollects when he saw James Brown at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

While sharing stories about the many things he’s seen and places he’s lived—he spent most of his adult years in New Jersey—Oliver also reveals that he quit school at an early age to work after his adoptive father died, so he never really learned how to read.

He did, however, learn a lot of on-the-job skills. At the City Ice Co., formerly located on Birmingham’s Southside, he learned how to haul ice and earned $21 a week doing so. At a local slaughterhouse, he learned how to skin cattle, debone hams, and cure bacon, earning $100 a week. At a New Jersey bread bakery, he learned how to drive a tractor trailer, repair cars, and do just about every other job at the company.

Asked how he was able to learn so many demanding jobs without knowing how to read, Oliver just shrugs: “It was just in me. I could read well enough.”  READ  MORE >>

Cadillac Area ALC

Volunteer says giving back is part of her social justice responsibility

Animal lover works to prevent cruelty to animals and teaches English to the migrant community

Cadillac News: 6.26.2018 by Mardi Suhs

Kathy Kirch loves animals, traveling and living in Spain, gardening, and helping migrant workers become adept at English.

Those are just a few of the passions that fill her busy life since the former director of the Cadillac-Wexford Public Library retired.

"I loved my job," she said. "I also love retirement. It allows me to travel to see my brothers and sisters in California."

Kirch began her career teaching English in Spain and fell in love with the country. She made her home in Barcelona from 1973 to 1984 and became familiar with the country, its music, food and wine. Now she returns once or twice a year for an extended stay.

When she's not traveling, she volunteers with the Adult Literacy Council of the Friends of the Cadillac-Wexford Public Library and with the Wonderland Humane Society.

With the literacy program, she tutors the migrant community, those working in the Christmas tree industry and on dairy farms.

"The kids know English, but the adults don't," she said. "It's to get people set up and feeling comfortable. I feel by the grace of God I had the chance to learn Spanish. Now it's time for me to give back. I see it as part of my social justice responsibility in this world. It's my reward to see them able to get on better in the community."  READ MORE >>

WALC

Those struggling to read find crafty ways to deceive, cope

Wichita Falls Times Record News: 6.27.2018 by Sara Shelton, Exec Director-WALC

Please help us.  Read on. You can make a huge difference! We need you.

“You’re 10 years old, sitting at a small wooden desk, praying the teacher won’t call on you. She turns toward you and says, ‘Johnny, read the first sentence on page two.’

Fear immediately seizes you as you stare down at the garbled mix of symbols on the page. They’re not familiar friends; they are strangers who glare at you with cryptic stares. They mock you.

Your inability to speak their language sends you to the dummy row. But despite the fact that you can’t comprehend how to put letters together or unravel their code, you are sent on to fifth grade. And sixth. And seventh. You receive your high school diploma, but you can’t read a word of it.

To survive in the world of literates, you become an expert at deception, relying on clever schemes to make up for your disability. You go to college. And when you graduate, you move from the dummy row in the back of the class to the head of the class…..you become a teacher!” (The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read by John Corcoran).

How can this happen?  He could not read or write but became a high school teacher? This is a similar story we hear often at the literacy council office. There is a common belief that people who can't read or write have a low IQ; however, this is usually not the case.

They have developed skills to get through life while hiding their secret, and hiding illiteracy isn't for dummies. You've got to be pretty sharp to get other people to do things for you without them knowing why or asking questions.

Mr. Corcoran has a learning disability that we see frequently at Wichita Adult Literacy Council (WALC).  Some are diagnosed but many are not.  READ MORE >>