Literacy – Spanning the US :: Duncan OK :: Mendocino Co CA :: Nassau Co NY :: SC

Literacy: Spanning the U.S.     

Duncan Area

Literacy

Proud to become an American

Duncan Banner: 9.12.2018 by Linda Provost

This Saturday five residents of Stephens County will be inducted to the United States of America with official citizenship, fulfilling dreams some have had for 20 years.

They will be the first graduates from the Duncan Area Literacy Council (DALC) Citizenship class according to Mary Brancich, director of DALC.

“This is the first class — Nancy Litsch and Maria Martinez had discussed it (citizenship class) during the ESL classes and several people have been asking about it,” Brancich said. “That’s what they wanted to do was to get their citizenship so … they came to me with the idea and I wrote a grant and the Oklahoma Department of Libraries provided the funds for the first class and away it went.”

“There was such a need, many of these people have been residents for 20 years in Duncan, in our community — they’ve worked, attended church, been involved in schools with their kids and been a part of the community — just never obtained their citizenship which they desperately wanted to do,” Brancich said.

Many of the volunteers learned about how someone becomes a citizen also.

“I didn’t even understand how it happens — how to become a citizen until they started doing this 

I’ve really been educated myself,” she said. “They become a citizen through naturalization and there are 100 questions about civics that they’ve got to answer. I bet that a big majority of people who are natural born citizens and even graduated from college couldn’t pass that test, it’s difficult.”  READ MORE >>

@MendoLibrary

Need to read: Adult Literacy Program kicks off at Ukiah Library

Ukiah Daily Journal: 9.13.2018 by Carole Brodsky

The ability to read is an indispensable skill that is often taken for granted. Most people assume that the majority of adults are literate, but according to Melissa Eleftherion Carr, branch librarian for the Ukiah Library, a mind-boggling number of adults cannot read. Linda Butler is the library’s volunteer adult literacy coordinator. She is fulfilling a decades-long goal to help increase the number of adult readers in the region.

With the support of the Ukiah Friends of the Library, Butler and Carr have rekindled what had become a dormant adult literacy program for Ukiah area residents.

“Linda is graciously donating her time to make sure this program launches and to see it through,” says Carr. And Butler’s background and long-term commitment to literacy have already produced results – with five literacy volunteers ready to be trained, and over a dozen adults eagerly waiting for the program’s rollout.

Butler is a 20-year resident of Ukiah – a single parent who works as a licensed marriage, family and child counselor. “When I first came here, there was an adult literacy program at the library. I promised myself that someday I would become a tutor,” says Butler. That “someday” came along last October when Butler approached

Carr about becoming a volunteer. But there was a wrinkle in her plan. “Unfortunately, the program had fallen by the wayside. I’m not sure when, but there was no literacy program when I began to work at the library four years ago,” says Carr.  READ MORE >>

@LiteracyNassau

Building a more literate Nassau

Literacy Nassau starts dyslexia program

LI Herald: 9.13.2018 by Nadya Nataly and Alexandra Dieckmann

Literacy Nassau, which has helped over 40,000 adults learn to read, write and speak English over the past 50 years, has outgrown its space in Freeport and is moving to Wantagh.

Tutoring of students will begin at the new facility on Sept. 17. The nonprofit also plans to host a grand opening in November, with a luncheon, a keynote speaker, a ribbon cutting and tours of the new space. Micciche, who is working on the planning and logistics, said she hoped it would take place on Nov. 4, the same day as Literacy Nassau’s first annual Run/Walk fundraiser in Eisenhower Park.

Melissa Grote, of North Bellmore, said that the organization’s tutoring was a “perfect fit” for her daughter Julianna. “As soon as I contacted Karen,” Grote said, “I knew this was for us.”

All current Literacy Nassau classes will continue at the Freeport Memorial Library and Long Island Cares in Freeport.

Over the past year, Literacy Nassau launched a pilot dyslexia program with a grant from the John and Janet Kornreich Charitable Foundation. Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects children and adults. Those who have it have trouble breaking words down into simple sounds, according to Micciche. Students with dyslexia struggle to learn how sounds relate to letters and words, which leads to slow reading and poor comprehension.

Micciche is using the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching reading.  READ MORE >>

Father’s Voice

Program allows inmates to record themselves reading books for their children

WDSU: 9.10.2018

A new program at a correctional facility in South Carolina is allowing inmates to record themselves reading books for their children, allowing them to strengthen the connection to their loved one.  WATCH 01:15