Literacy: Spanning the US
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Literacy Council Announces Four New Volunteers
Salisbury
Post:
5.03.2020
Making good use of their time during the
shelter-in-place order, several new volunteers recently completed training to
become Rowan County Literacy Council tutors. Tom Pickett, Steve Combs, and
Cathy Ryerson completed training during the lockdown, and Shally Mendez
completed her training shortly before the lockdown was announced. All four
completed an online training program from home and are now certified to work
with Adult Basic Education or English as a Second Language students.
Pickett, Combs, and Ryerson are retirees
who decided to volunteer after reading an editorial in the Salisbury Post about
the literacy council’s work with citizenship candidates. Mendez is a
fourth-year student at Catawba College who plans to attend law school after
graduation.
Pickett wanted to “help someone learn
how to decipher the letters on a page into words, giving them a skill that no
one can take away from them and letting them into the wonderful world of the
written language.”
Combs was also interested in helping
people in the community, noting, “When I stop to think about it, my greatest,
life-long enjoyment has come from the experience of reading. Tutoring is a way
of joining together with another person in the worthwhile pursuit of spreading
the joy.”
Although many people are currently
staying home in compliance with guidelines on social distancing, Rowan County
Literacy Council Program Coordinator Laurel Harry noted that it is still a good
time to think about volunteering. “We transitioned to online training for
volunteers a few years ago, and in 2020 rolled out a streamlined training
program that volunteers can complete from home in about three hours. READ
MORE ➤➤
Based on (7) readability formulas:
Grade Level: 14
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 21-22 yrs. old
(college level)
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Poor Literacy Is Holding N.M. Back
Santa
Fe New Mexican:
5.02.2020 by Heather Heunermund
For the first time in well over a decade,
the National Center for Education Statistics released county estimates of
literacy ability for adults through the U.S. Program for International
Assessment of Adult Competencies Skills
Map: State and County Indicators of Adult Literacy and Numeracy, with county estimates for every state
in the union, including New Mexico.
The Skills Map was released quietly in
mid-April and went largely unnoticed, though ground-breaking. The trees
noticed. The trees are screaming. Does anyone care?
Probably not because most of the quiet
go unnoticed in society. The quiet are those adults who have limited literacy
and language abilities. They look and act like most of us so they blend into
the background like the trees. Perhaps they are our friends, neighbor or
co-workers.
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We noticed, and the adult literacy
programs quietly serving this population also noticed. We noticed that New
Mexico ranks 49th in literacy nationwide, with its average scale score barely
outpacing Louisiana. We also noticed that New Mexico is the least literate
state when considering the lowest level on the scale, falling just behind
California and Texas, likely due to language barriers and other factors. In New
Mexico, 29 percent of adults function at literacy Level 1, 31 percent at Level
2 and 39 percent at Level 3. By contrast, the most literate state is New
Hampshire with 11 percent of adults at Level 1, compared to 22 percent
nationwide. READ
MORE ➤➤
Based on (7) readability formulas:
Grade Level: 9
Reading Level: fairly difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 13-15 yrs. old
(Eighth and Ninth graders)
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Literacy Partners Continues Its Mission
By Shifting Programs Online
Forbes: 5.04.2020 by Bettina Zilkha
COVID-19 has been hitting non-profits
hard in all sectors, but this being New York City, swimming, not sinking, is
the only option for can-do CEOs. Literacy
Partners, whose mission is to break the cycle
of poverty by educating parents of young children, has had to postpone its
annual gala, a crucial fundraising tool for the organization. Anthony Tassi has
been Literacy Partners’ CEO since January 2013. Tassi faces the enormous task
of leading the organization through tough times ahead, and getting creative in
terms of fundraising and adapting to shifting services online.
What does your job entail?
The most important job of any leader is
to get the right people on the bus, define an ambitious vision, and help the
team use its collective skills to get closer and closer to achieving it.
At Literacy Partners, our free adult
literacy classes, community workshops, and educational media help low-income
and immigrant adults build the skills they need for success in today’s economy.
At the same time, our research-based curriculum enhances their capacity to
promote their children’s early learning, social emotional growth and school
readiness.
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You are continuing with the mission, but
not in person. How does that work?
We’ve had to reinvent ourselves from an
in-person education program into a remote/online learning community. We have
focused our program from seven different offerings to the three that can
succeed the most during the social distancing era. It has been a huge
challenge, but my team has risen to the occasion and the strength of our
relationships with our students has kept most them connected to us. We’ve also
focused on how we can innovate in the new era and create new programs to meet
the needs of our students at home – programs that I think will help parents thrive
in the COVID-19 era and beyond.
What is Literacy Partners doing to plan
and prepare for a new reality - perhaps a long break from in-person learning?
We have already done the work to retool
our educational programs for the online context. As long as the public schools
remain closed, we will continue engaging our adult students online as well. And
we will continue innovating to create new digital solutions that build skills
and help parents advance their education – and the education of their families. READ MORE ➤➤
Based on (7) readability formulas:
Grade Level: 12
Reading Level: fairly difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 17-18 yrs. old
(Twelfth graders)
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Catholic
Charities Education & Workforce Development Classes Move Online
WSET: 5.04.2020 by Ida Domingo
Catholic
Charities of the Diocese of Arlington has moved all its education and workforce
development classes to distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organization, which offered 56
classes at its Manassas office and five parish locations last year, provides
adult education on topics ranging from English as a second language to computer
literacy and GED classes.
“The economic toll the pandemic is
taking on families is significant. We’re helping our students continue to push
forward, acquiring the skills they need to compete in the workforce or re-enter
the workforce,” said Jackeline Chavez, Program Director, Education and
Workforce Development, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington. READ
MORE ➤➤
Based on (7)
readability formulas:
Grade Level: 15
Reading Level: very difficult to read.
Reader's Age: College graduate
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